Even though the "opening hand" clause is pretty neat, I still like Everlasting Torment a little better mostly because of the cheaper cost and the wither. Still, this card is awesome and it should feel awesome.
jumpenrun
★★★★☆ (4.2/5.0)(5 votes)
Burn those Freakin Black, Green and White. hahaha... Ignore Blue.
HairlessThoctar
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(9 votes)
Red Deck Wins actually being able to compete against janky lifegain decks makes this card extremely playable.
It's almost absurd how many silver bullets get printed that hose burn. This will hose the hosers.
I know Red isn't really big on life gain or damage prevention, but... I think the biggest problem with this Leyline is that, unlike other Leyline cards, this card affects everyone. While other Leylines benefit only you or hurt only your opponent(s), the way this card affects all players might mean it is less likely to be useful in a deck that has more than one color.
statiefreez
★★★★☆ (4.8/5.0)(2 votes)
This is the perfect answer to 1 of the few main opponents RDW has: lifegain! I've lost so many games because my opponent has something like Basalisk Collar or Transcendent Master, and I can't stop the lifegain.
This card also kills most sideboard cards, which usually are creatures with Protection from ______, or RDW's nightmare, Korr Firewalker.
Donovan_Fabian
★★☆☆☆ (2.7/5.0)(6 votes)
This seems.. incredibly weak. Let me see.. the two colors it would be best against.. aka life gain colors.. are green and white. The two colors which have the most enchantment removal.. are green and white.
Green has acidic slime and back to nature, naturalize, and nature's claim. White just got warpriest of thune.
Yeah green and white could care less about this enchantment.
Jaytrav
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0)(5 votes)
It says "damage cant be prevented". Does this mean you cannot block with your creatures to prevent damage? In which case no damage from any source to any source can be prevented?
VoicesofChaos
★★☆☆☆ (2.3/5.0)(3 votes)
This leyline is garbage! Only leyline that affects everyone and not only you or only opponents. Red is my favorite color but my favorite color combo is Red/White which this card be pointless in. If the effect was only "Opponents can't gain life" that probably would be broken and over-powered due to Swords of Plowshares or cards you play where everyone would gain life but it would probably work as "Opponent's card effects can't cause life gain or prevention." That would be cool!
brothersbutler
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0)(2 votes)
If you put this leyline out and an opponent put out leyline of sanctity, which states that they have shroud, which leyline wins? They can't prevent your damage but you can't target them, which is preventing the damage?
Your opponent's Leyline of Sanctity forbids you to even target him. This means that you can't even cast a Fireball with that player among its targets. So Leyline of Punishment does nothing in this case. But, it does make non-targeted spells' damage unpreventable (for example, you can cast a Volcanic Fallout and it will deal damage and kill creatures with toughness up to 2, even if they have protection from it)
specter001
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
this is badass for white
Keiya
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Seems almost as if they made this card to counteract the existence of Kor Firewalker. A nice card overall; if only White didn't get that evil Leyline of Sanctity...
CeremonialBathory
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(3 votes)
@VoicesofChaos - If you're playing red and depending on life gain or damage prevention, you're doing it wrong.
Aburaishi
★★★★☆ (4.5/5.0)(2 votes)
@Donovan_Fabian: You're taking that short-sighted viewpoint of "This can be removed, so it's pointless." If you find that to be an issue, build a deck out of Shroud and/or invulnerability effects. If you have a deck made solely out of cards that an opponent would use removal on, I very much doubt they'd have enough removal to get rid of it all; and this thing can come into play pre-game, where there is surprisingly little removal. Besides, the point to it is not just the life gain, but the damage prevent; this is obviously hand-tailored to a burn deck, which- o hey look!- means a red one.
To be honest, it pales in comparison to most of the other Leylines (besides Leyline of Lightning, leading me to believe the inventor of the Leylines just plain didn't like red), but this is just plain a good (not great) card that should find a place in any burn deck.
Falgorn, Protection still works against cards played while this is on the field, as protection means that the creature cannot even be TARGETED, and rather than preventing damage from permanants of that color, makes the INCAPABLE OF DAMAGING them.
Bowshewicz
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.5/5.0)(1 vote)
Falgorn is correct. Refer to rule 702.14, "Protection."
702.14e Any damage that would be dealt by sources that have the stated quality to a permanent or player with protection is prevented.
@brothersbutler Refer to boshewics post for the relevant rule: Protection uses prevention for damage and thusly this leyline means that protection will no longer prevent the damage. This doesn't make protection useless or something as it still prevents targeting and sacrifices enchantments of that color that become attached to it, AND it still can't be blocked by those colors. What it loses is the ability to block those colors without taking damage, or block damage from board sweepers etc...
Protections uses the word 'prevent' and this stops the word 'prevent'. Hence this stops protection, in that specific instance. All other effects of protection still hold true.
@SoulShatter You are correct that in some sense it does make damage 'incapable' of hitting the target. But I'm afraid mtg is very specific when it comes to semantics. The specific word used in the rule book is 'prevent'. You probably were taught by someone that maybe paraphrased the rules so it's understandable, but at a Tournament environment, the specific wording is important.
A good rule of thumb for mtg is if one source says that something CAN happen and another says it CANNOT, always go with the CANNOT case. There may be a few weird exceptions to this, but I can't think of one off hand.
Think of Wrath of God, it says 'destroy' all creatures. Regenerate says to replace all instances of the word 'destroy' along with remove damage, etc. But Wrath also denies regeneration. Negative effect beats the positive effect.
@VoiceofChaos Life gain and damage prevention is easily something a mono-red deck can give it up. On the contrary, those two things (life gain in particular) hoses mono-red horribly in some cases. In other cases (say ), you should be able to keep a board position or at least a little card draw or card advantage to offset such effects.
So in short, this card was built for mono-red and thus, what could be considered a downside, really shouldn't effect decks this was meant for.
Nagoragama
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
White's my color, so I loathe this card. It's against everything white stands for (Protection, Damage Prevention, Lifegain).
@VoicesofChaos: Leyline of the Meek affects everyone. But white is very good at making tokens, especially with help from green. How is this card any different? You're better equipped to handle it than your opponent is, and if you aren't then you take this card out of your deck.
wicked_pick
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
These mountains are where the protagonist of Journey video game headed to..
Travelsonic
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
@ raptorjesus69
I'd say that Wither can be good, or be useless depending on the deck you run - I mean if you just drop lots of creatures to sacrifice - like creating a deck where you sacrifice say Goblin Arsonists and/or Mudbutton Torchrunners with Goblin Bombardment, the granting of all your creatures Wither with Everlasting Torment won't really mean anything significant, for example.
Though I agree, the lower CMC remaining a constant outweighs, to me anyways, that chance of getti this out before the game starts.
Winhert
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Me:My turbofogs are going to win every match! LoP:Oh really? Me:...
This finds a home nicely in RDW, indeed. It's far from the best of the Leylines. None of them are "garbage." This one is more of a situational/sideboard type card. Leyline of Punishment effectively robs Baneslayer Angel and its ilk of lifelink and prevents abuse of certain combos e.g. Necropotence or Yawgmoth's Bargain with Ivory Tower, or Phyrexian Processor with Angelic Chorus. This nips any of that something-for-nothing shenanigans in the bud. It also messes with life manipulation trickery like Soul Conduit. What's that, a Mark of Asylum so I can't bolt your creatures? Well, I've got something for that right here. Are they hiding behind creatures with protection from red? Now you can burn 'em. It has no meaningful drawback in a mono-red deck, and blue isn't much hindered by it either. This Leyline also puts a crack in Progenitus' armor, though it only broadens somewhat your options in dealing with it. You'll need 10 points of untargeted damage but red has ways to make it happen. Playing with green, this gets around Phyrexian Hydra's minor drawback quite nicely, basically turning it into simply a 7/7 infect that could get out as soon as third turn. Right now I'm running it in an Izzet blitz deck, complete with Guttersnipes giving a little extra hurt when I cast a burn or a counter, and this deck has answers to green and white's removal attempts.
Fireballmage
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
One of the issues with this card is that you don't really need the ability to force damage through in the early game. It also suffers from the opposite problem of Leyline of Sanctity: It's excruciatingly narrow and fits into very few kinds of decks, most of which really don't like a 4 card that does nothing on its own (Even as a sideboard option).
I dunno, I just really keep thinking about how in almost every situation I'd prefer Sulfuric Vortex or Everlasting Torment.
SirLibraryEater
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Oh, you're playing a lifegain deck? Opening hand, this.
Comments (36)
It's almost absurd how many silver bullets get printed that hose burn. This will hose the hosers.
Based on this mountain artwork.
This card also kills most sideboard cards, which usually are creatures with Protection from ______, or RDW's nightmare, Korr Firewalker.
Green has acidic slime and back to nature, naturalize, and nature's claim. White just got warpriest of thune.
Yeah green and white could care less about this enchantment.
Your opponent's Leyline of Sanctity forbids you to even target him. This means that you can't even cast a Fireball with that player among its targets. So Leyline of Punishment does nothing in this case. But, it does make non-targeted spells' damage unpreventable (for example, you can cast a Volcanic Fallout and it will deal damage and kill creatures with toughness up to 2, even if they have protection from it)
To be honest, it pales in comparison to most of the other Leylines (besides Leyline of Lightning, leading me to believe the inventor of the Leylines just plain didn't like red), but this is just plain a good (not great) card that should find a place in any burn deck.
702.14e Any damage that would be dealt by sources that have the stated quality to a permanent or
player with protection is prevented.
Pyroclasm will kill a Kor Firewalker with Leyline of Punishment on the board.
Refer to boshewics post for the relevant rule:
Protection uses prevention for damage and thusly this leyline means that protection will no longer prevent the damage. This doesn't make protection useless or something as it still prevents targeting and sacrifices enchantments of that color that become attached to it, AND it still can't be blocked by those colors. What it loses is the ability to block those colors without taking damage, or block damage from board sweepers etc...
I.E. If I attack with a spark elemental with this out and the enemy blocks with progenitus, I can then Blood Frenzy, Double Cleave and successfully kill it with my 10 damage.
@SoulShatter
You are correct that in some sense it does make damage 'incapable' of hitting the target. But I'm afraid mtg is very specific when it comes to semantics. The specific word used in the rule book is 'prevent'. You probably were taught by someone that maybe paraphrased the rules so it's understandable, but at a Tournament environment, the specific wording is important.
A good rule of thumb for mtg is if one source says that something CAN happen and another says it CANNOT, always go with the CANNOT case. There may be a few weird exceptions to this, but I can't think of one off hand.
Think of Wrath of God, it says 'destroy' all creatures. Regenerate says to replace all instances of the word 'destroy' along with remove damage, etc. But Wrath also denies regeneration. Negative effect beats the positive effect.
@VoiceofChaos
Life gain and damage prevention is easily something a mono-red deck can give it up. On the contrary, those two things (life gain in particular) hoses mono-red horribly in some cases. In other cases (say
So in short, this card was built for mono-red and thus, what could be considered a downside, really shouldn't effect decks this was meant for.
I'd say that Wither can be good, or be useless depending on the deck you run - I mean if you just drop lots of creatures to sacrifice - like creating a deck where you sacrifice say Goblin Arsonists and/or Mudbutton Torchrunners with Goblin Bombardment, the granting of all your creatures Wither with Everlasting Torment won't really mean anything significant, for example.
Though I agree, the lower CMC remaining a constant outweighs, to me anyways, that chance of getti this out before the game starts.
LoP:Oh really?
Me:...
Because ef your fog.
Leyline of Punishment effectively robs Baneslayer Angel and its ilk of lifelink and prevents abuse of certain combos e.g. Necropotence or Yawgmoth's Bargain with Ivory Tower, or Phyrexian Processor with Angelic Chorus. This nips any of that something-for-nothing shenanigans in the bud. It also messes with life manipulation trickery like Soul Conduit.
What's that, a Mark of Asylum so I can't bolt your creatures? Well, I've got something for that right here.
Are they hiding behind creatures with protection from red? Now you can burn 'em.
It has no meaningful drawback in a mono-red deck, and blue isn't much hindered by it either.
This Leyline also puts a crack in Progenitus' armor, though it only broadens somewhat your options in dealing with it. You'll need 10 points of untargeted damage but red has ways to make it happen.
Playing with green, this gets around Phyrexian Hydra's minor drawback quite nicely, basically turning it into simply a 7/7 infect that could get out as soon as third turn.
Right now I'm running it in an Izzet blitz deck, complete with Guttersnipes giving a little extra hurt when I cast a burn or a counter, and this deck has answers to green and white's removal attempts.
I dunno, I just really keep thinking about how in almost every situation I'd prefer Sulfuric Vortex or Everlasting Torment.
Opening hand, this.