Problem is, this route doesn't work with legendary landcycling.

Now this sort of just feels like a "bad card" too. But much like Ritual of Flame, it's a "bad card" that becomes a "good card" from a combo and Johnny angle.

I do have mixed feelings about these two cards.

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.

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.

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.

I think I get what you're saying simply because, even with discarding a land, it is an easy 3 mana on turn 1. Probably would be OP in standard but would be a little more comparable to something in vintage or modern.

I could lower it to , but then it might be not worth it.

Oh, ha. I completely missed the part where you have to discard a land... I presumed it was any card. Well, that's a double non-combo with Reckless Wurm then, I guess. ;)

To be honest, it's really, really hard to balance fast mana. You think the restrictions are fine, but then some 'best deck' comes along and just gets a midge faster, and suddenly 70% of the environment is running that deck. I gotta admit that burning a land is a good way to make up for the immediate speed. Here's hoping this spell doesn't let you win by turn two on the play 50% of the time when you do it, though.

The really frustrating thing is that, except for those 'best decks', fast mana is usually bad. Lotus Petal for a round one Black Knight simply isn't a great play. I think you're on the right track for a fun card for a personal set. I'm guessing real world playtesting would tell us that this card is about as powerful as Chrome Mox, which is pretty damn potent.

I was thinking of maybe going "discard a creature or planeswalker" but I wasn't sure if that'd be too pushed.

I can't help but groan at how much this isn't a combo with Reckless Wurm. ;)

Kind of a black counterpart to Winds of Pandemonium. Bit of a Yawgmoth feel, but diff.