As an additional cost to put Ritual of Flame in your set; pretend Lightning Bolt doesn't exist.

Ok ok; so this does combo with other cards in your set. Notably giving quite a lot of things a way to return to your hand or otherwise flicker, on demand. But this is a huge cost for the damage.

Vitenka crying so much, he be like

­

;)

­Shard Volley also pretended that Lightning Bolt didn't exist, and it was used quite a bit in draft. It happens.

Oh, it's not so much "pretending lightning bolt doesn't exist". Seems to me that, with rare exceptions, Wizards themselves want to pretend Lightning Bolt and Counterspell don't exist. As they seem to be treated as OP for standard and Wizards is always designing underpowered or slightly "feel bad" alternatives to them for standard. At least, it's underpowered/feel-bad relative to my nostalgia for 1994-2000.

But the thought here is for this to work with red's discard-matters theme that's developing such that in practice this would actually be better than lightning bolt when used as part of combos (such as with "whenever you cycle or discard a card" triggers). Otherwise, on its own, it is indeed a "seriously weakened lightning bolt" and believe me, I "feel bad" when designing such things because of Lightning Bolt.