Pointed Discussion

I love this card for one reason, it's name. You just want to shout it, HAMMER OF BOGARDAN TO THE FACE!

Great name with great card. Otherwise too expensive.

Iconic Red card... and it looks amazing on the new border! <3

No burn deck with prospects to survive in a long game should be without one. It's not only because of the name, but that doesn't HURT matters.

There are some seemingly-terrible cards that experienced players adore that new players just never get. Over time, I've come to appreciate a lot of them. This...I still think is cost-prohibitive, honestly. I get the appeal, but...

It's a solid card, but the prohibitive cost makes it seem like it would fit well in an uncommon slot.

I suppose the name is the real reason it's a rare.
In fact, nevermind. A card with a name like that should be mythic anyway, so it balances out.

Slightly cheaper than Magma Phoenix. Although deciding to tap out turn 6 before your draw step can really suck, especially if you draw a Teetering Peaks that can make your Ghitu Encampment huge but now you can't afford the activation cost to animate it.

Rather overshadowed by cards like Lightning Bolt but what ever. Its still pretty good

STOP!!! HAMMERTIME!!!

Everyone, remember, this beast came out before RDW tried fourth turn kills... Magic was at least a bit slower back then, making this a real contender. Too bad it's a sorcery, though.

Worse than Thunderblade Charge, unfortunately.

Legendary Instant means only one can be on the stack at a time. Casting another counters both.

If this and Lightning Bolt had a baby it would be called Hammer of Thor

RRR
Legendary Instant- Mythic Rare
Deal 3 damage to target creature or player, then return Hammer of Thor to its owner's hand.

what does 'Legendary Instant' mean? It means I'm awesome, shut up and take 3 to the face!

@Neokada: EDIT: If Hammer of Thor would go to the graveyard or be exiled from anywhere, it is instead cast without paying it's mana cost and is uncounterable. Because Thor says:
" *** you I'm mother *** THOR!" :)

In Mirage's day, red was quite slow. After all, this was around the time Lightning Bolt was considered too fast and powerful (but the Counterspell was not, go figure)
Burn spells didn't get much better than this back then.

@Neokada actually the legendary rule only applies to permanents and it only applies to the battlefield zone. A legendary instant wouldn't mean anything at all.

Braid of Fire. Once you have the Braid running, you can cast it each turn for three.

Thunderblade Charge is NOT strictly better than Hammer. For one, Thunderblade Charge requires a creature deck to fully utilize its recursion, where as Hammer could be used in a counter-burn deck that has no creature.

To some of the people who don't understand the appeal: It's important to understand that when this card came out, graveyard-recursion and reusable instants or sorceries were almost unheard of. The entire buyback mechanic was basically based on this card (and a few other things, like Death Spark.)

It's a bit obsolete now, yeah; like a lot of new mechanics, they overcosted it. 8 mana for 3 damage a turn was a bit much even at the time. But it was a very important card in its day, not so much because of its raw power but because it was doing something that people hadn't really seen before and opened up new areas of design as a result.

(The fact that it was really fun to use in casual didn't hurt, of course.)