Ball Lightning

Life of The Party

is life of the party a ball lightning?

One of the defining qualities of Ball Lightning style creatures is that they, by default, get sacrificed at end of turn. It is Ball Lightning adjacent, though.

Ball Lightning Creatures Life of the Party

Color-Specific Haste Creatures

Can every color have a creature with haste if the creature goes away after one turn (like ball lightning), or is that an effect you try to keep to certain colors? Obviously the unearth mechanic exists in every color, but I don’t know if that’s treated differently from say, a mono-white or mono-blue ball lightning.

White doesn’t get haste creatures (with the one Uber-rare exception of Akroma). Blue can have haste on 0-powered creatures with tap abilities, but it’s also something we do super infrequently.

Ball Lightning Blue Colors Creatures Haste Mechanics Tap / Untap Unearth Unearth White

Lightning Skelemental Trivia

It’s my birthday and my favourite Magic card is Lightning Skelemental, so I was wondering if you had any cool trivia about making it or other variations on Ball Lightning?Also I want to sneak in a thank you for being such a positive pillar of the Magic community. You are a hero to me and I’m sure many others as well.

Modern Horizon sets love mechanical smash-ups that have a fun name. We do Ball Lightning variants all the time, but be haven’t done a lot of multicolor ones. This card came from us realizing that we don’t like saboteur discard creatures because of the repetition, so put it on a creature that only hits once.Thanks for the kind words. Much appreciated!Happy Birthday!

Appreciation Ball Lightning Birthday Creatures Discard Lightning Skelemental Modern

Ball Lightning in Draft

Is ball lightning too powerful in draft to see print at uncommon?

Probably not.

Ball Lightning Card Printing Draft Formats Uncommons

Temporary Creatures Status

Hey Mark! Somebody asked about temporary creatures and it got me thinking , are creatures like ball lightning and Spark Elemental still in red's color pie.

Yes.

Ball Lightning Color Pie Colors Creatures Elemental Red Spark Elemental

Ball Lightning's Future

so we havent see any ball lightning type cards in awhile. did it step too much on dashes toes?

We haven’t seen the last of those type of cards.

Ball Lightning

Tom's Dark Statement

"You can't use your Maze of Ith to stop my Ball Lightning because of my Blood Moon" Tom said darkly.

: )

Ball Lightning Blood Blood Moon Maze of Ith

Favored The Dark Design

What's your favorite design from The Dark? Mine is Ball Lightning.

Dark Heart of the Wood. My love of that card is what made me figure out Zuran Orb was busted the first time I saw it.

Ball Lightning Dark Heart of the Wood Mark's Favorites Orb The Dark Zuran Orb

Ball Lightning With Provoke

Sorry, back to trample bolt : would a Ball Lightning with provoke work ?

It’s different in a bunch of ways but it is a workaround.

Ball Lightning Provoke Trample

Trample on Anax & Cymede

So what's the deal with trample on Anax & Cymede? I was convinced leaked talk of its ability was evidence of a fake, because white very rarely gets trample (and apparently only for flavor reasons,) and red seems to limit it to huge creatures (giants, dragons, etc.) and things that imitate Ball Lightning.

Red is secondary at trample and gets it all the time at common.

Ball Lightning Creatures Dragon Flavor Giant Red Secondary Trample White

Creature Confusion

The comes into play and dies being confusing? does that mean ball lightning and blistering firecat, and others of that ilk are not going to be reprinted? I like those cards!

Those examples do not die as soon as they enter the battlefield. They die later in the turn after which they were able to do something. I’m talking about a creature that enters the battlefield and immediately dies. That confuses players.

Ball Lightning Blistering Firecat Card Printing Creatures Enter The Battlefield Reprints

Waylay Rules Clarification

"The cards do what the cards do, the game does what the game does and the two interact. But we can’t keep changing the cards to match function due to the state of the game when they were first released." So, Waylay :( you have to admit that Substance was applied to Waylay as a patch for its "White Ball Lightning" status, after getting the "only during combat" errata. Look I'm pretty ok with the rules changing, but it needs to not feel like there's picking and choosing going on. That's all.

The original intent of Waylay was never that it could be the White Ball Lightning. The errata is to make the card play the way the vast majority of the players thinks it plays that also happens to match original intent.

Ball Lightning Errata Rules Waylay White

Emotional Red Spells

"If you want red to feel more emotional, find spells that have some emotional resonance." What red spells do you feel exemplify emotional resonance? Stranglehold? Anger? Lash Out? Lightning Bolt? Ball Lightning? I can see how the title of a card would clearly convey an emotion, but that feels like good branding, rather than good design. What are cards whose designs have clear emotional resonance? Do cards have intrinsic resonance outside the context of the metagame or personal history?

EDIT: TUMBLR’S HAVING ISSUES. THE REAL QUESTION WAS WHY DOES NICOL BOLAS HAVE RED IN HIM? I think the red got in their to portray his dragon-ness. Personally, I don’t see a lot of red in Nicol Bolas personality-wise. He is not at all impulsive and doesn’t tend to let his emotions drive his decisions.

Ball Lightning Blogatog / Tumblr Dragon Lash Out Lightning Bolt Nicol Bolas Red Spells Stranglehold

Red's Short-term Damage

We've seen red cards like spark elemental, hellspark elemental and ball lightning which have high power low toughness and die at the end of turn. Is this quick short term damage still part of red?

Yes.

Ball Lightning Elemental Red Spark Elemental