Pointed Discussion

Hell Cat!

Kinda reminds me of the new card Elemental Appeal.

Ball Lightning, but three stronger for ? Sign me up.

I'd run both, but that's just me.

artworks bad azz .. alright card morph is useless .. love rasing this card from the daed..
against my opponnts .. black red formats best ..3.6/5

Love it. Ball Lightning + this = ultimate aggro red deck.

This would be a poor man's ball lightning if it were actually cheaper. As it stands, it is just a worse version of that card, whose only saving grace is its morph mechanic. Use Ball Lightning unless you have a strategy that revolves around morph.

The art is just sick. That is one mean fucker.

I'll run Elemental Appeal, though. Same effect, but at 25 cents instead of two dollars. Maybe I'll paste the kitty's awesome art over the Appeal, though, just for kicks.

@Azazyel: Cat cannot be Duress'ed and is somewhat more versatile with the Morph cost.

Hot ***.

Sweet art, but overpriced (monetarily. Mana-wise it's a good value).

I love this card.
I have a R/G ball lightning themed deck, and although Ball Lightning has the most bang for its cost, putting this as a close mono-red second *cough* Grounbreaker *cough*
Elemental Appeal is also a good investment, but the fact that it's 4 red is a little frightening for a 2 colour deck. Another thing to compare it to would be Blitz Hellion I suppose. Another colour and 1 more to the cost makes it unboltable, and it keeps coming back.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is, Ball Lightning is good, yes, but you need more than just Ball Lightning if you want to win.

5/5

Please don't mention that ball lightning is better because the 1 colorless in the cost should give him more than just 1 power.
Why do you think they give him an RR morph cost?

You can't backslide Ball Lightning

Alright, you want to compare this to Ball lightning, lets compare this to ball lightning. For fun lets throw in assault strobe to see who will work more effectively with it.

Ball Lightning comes out turn 3 with no acceleration. with assault strobe, you are swinging for 12 in total trample damage. This is turn 4.

Blistering Firecat. Morph it turn two. Turn 3, un morph it and play assault strobe on it. Swing for 14 total trample damage. Oh Look! This is turn 3 you are doing this. hell they will see it coming, but they will also see ball lightning coming too.

Case closed.

You're not supposed to play it out like Ball Lightning, you're supposed to play it face down and surprise 7 damage your opponent. Really only works more than once if you have other morph creatures, you can psyche them out thinking you've got lots of Firecats waiting to pounce the moment they let their guard down.

Turn one, Swamp, Dark Ritual this guy face-down.
Turn two, Graven Cairns to get the two red to flip him.

Any number of Red accell cards can pull off the same for Ball Lightning, but not with a 2/2 blocker for your first turn, and that extra point of damage never hurt no-one. The added Black also gives you access to Tutors.


Plus, guys, it's a Cat, and one of the few worthwhile Red ones.

Ball Lightning is a 6/1 for RRR

This is eh. Personally would prefer ball lightnings.

"Alright, you want to compare this to Ball lightning, lets compare this to ball lightning. For fun lets throw in assault strobe to see who will work more effectively with it.

Ball Lightning comes out turn 3 with no acceleration. with assault strobe, you are swinging for 12 in total trample damage. This is turn 4.

Blistering Firecat. Morph it turn two. Turn 3, un morph it and play assault strobe on it. Swing for 14 total trample damage. Oh Look! This is turn 3 you are doing this. hell they will see it coming, but they will also see ball lightning coming too.

Case closed." ~Boakes2047

Case open.

Do you actually know what casting a morph costs? The same cost as a ball lightning. you're doing both of your assault strobe effects turn 4 without acceleration. Just wasting more mana the 4th turn doing nothing instead of another burn effect.

Case closed.

My Argument:
This is only slightly sub-par to ball lightning.
Reasoning:
Typically if you run something like this or ball lightning in a burn deck, you're only focused on how fast can you get the damage out there and how much damage you can maximize for your mana. The problem here is this only does 7 for 4 cmc while ball lightning does 6 for 3. Adding one damage for {1} isn't the best thing in the world. However, with that said, if you're not moving fast enough (then you're build the deck wrong, but let's continue...), this guy offers a 2/2 consistent attacker that you can turn into a 7/1 for a huge blow later, or even use it as a pop-up blocker for someone's huge monster while they think they're getting away with a huge blow themselves. Drewsel is absolutely right--you can also pop this guy face down again with backslide and save him for a rainy day. You could even put backslide on a stick, which would go well in a burn deck anyway with an incinerate on it or something to that effect if you don't want to count on drawing backslide. You could even throw trickbind/stifle on a stick and save either for later too. I myself use a U/R deck just so i can draw out my burn spells faster.
4.5/5... but that's what I gave Ball Lightning, too, anyway...

It's a Ball Lightning with +1/+0 for , or you can lay it as a normal blocker and flip it for a surprise offensive later in the game.
Plus, it's an Elemental Cat. If that's not cool enough, I don't know what is.

And the girl in the corner said,
"Boy, I wanna warn ya!
It'll turn into Firecat Blist!"

A big advantage this has over Ball Lightning is that its morph lets it survive the turn, albeit as a 2/2.

So say you're up against control, they wrath your board. Playing Ball Lightning at this point is not that good unless they've got less than 6 life - it doesn't put any further pressure on them in terms of board presence.

This does. Attacking for 2, turn after turn, till you can morph and kill them - that'd be pretty good.

For a moment i thought about putting this in a cat deck,
but the mana cost screamed "DON'T" even more agressively than the cat looks on the artwork.

Don't forget the silliness of Morph's uncertainty - just what IS that 2/2? Could be ANYTHING.

"Pff, he's only got two mana, how bad could it OH HOLY SHIT WHAT"

Lots of fun with Astral Slide either bringing him face up from morph of recurring him with slide! Ball lightning ode with a little more utility. Also can cheat his way under an ensnaring bridge. Still no ball lightning but still loads of fun
4/5

Raksha give it +2/+2 and double strike.

Not Even Doom Music...