MTG Salvation

While the flashback on Devil's Play is nice, the exiling is so huge and the potential recycling of the card isn't that shabby either. I'd cut fireball out of the 3.

As someone else mentioned, red X-spells are common splash cards. I don't like Devil's Play for that reason. You have to be heavy red to have a good chance of getting any decent value out of the flashback. Add that to the fact that Red Sun's Zenith shuts down so many "when X dies..." effects and recursion spells and shuffles back into your deck for another chance to shine and I have to vote RSZ.

Quote from Konfusius

I don't get why Banefire gets so much love. The damage splitting came up much more frequently for me than my opponent countering my Fireball.

I do find Banefire's abilities to be much more relevant in Multiplayer (I'd have gone close to voting for it, had it been in wtwlf123's initial list) - there's more counters and prevention flying about in those games.
That said, repeatability is also golden in MP, so RSZ probably wins for me.
No Rolling Thunder? It's waaaay better than Fireball. Or does that extra R discount it?

Quote from CadaverousBl00m »

No Rolling Thunder? It's waaaay better than Fireball. Or does that extra r discount it?

The extra R makes it waaaay worse than Fireball. Plus, Rolling Thunder strictly worse than Comet Storm; another card I don't think is good enough for the cube.

Quote from wtwlf123

The extra R makes it waaaay worse than Fireball. Plus, Rolling Thunder strictly worse than Comet Storm; another card I don't think is good enough for the cube.

Fair enough. You can tell I'm used to having more time to blow people away.

Devil's Play for sure.

Anyhow, I'll love to see a poll with just Red Sun's Zenith and Fireball. That seemed like a closer fight.

Devil's Play and I think it's not even close to the other X spells.

Quote from wtwlf123

Ya, but two uses out of Devil's Play is card advantage, which is nice for red.

Of course it is; I'll take the extra cards where I can get them in red. Devil's Play and Red Sun's Zenith are close for me, but as I get more uses out of Red Sun's Zenith per game on average (and therefore more damage per spell), I had to vote for the Zenith. They're both way ahead of Fireball, and that's saying something because Fireball is a bomb.

Quote from Donald

Possibly, I don't run reanimator support in my cube so recursion is less of an issue which is why I voted for Devil's Play. I brought up Fireball vs. RSZ several times with my playgroup but they weren't interested in RSZ, care to give more detail on why the exiling is so valuable? I split Fireball a fair amount so I was pretty indifferent as to which one we used.

For us exiling has been more relevant than any other extra on red X spells.

The biggest value of exiling is not strongly related to reanimation spells. It's nice to know that the creature you kill will not come back to bug you later, but exiling one creature doesn't turn your opponent's reanimation spells into dead cards. It's hitting creatures with persist, undying, 'leave the battlefield' triggers and in-built reanimation where exiling hurts the most. I've exiled many a kamigawa dragon, where a destroy effect would have lost me the game. Exiling Kitchen Finks where your opponent was likely counting on the extra body and the life is less spectacular, but still quite strong. Kill Bloodghast or Vengevine once and for all. And Innistrad block has given us undying, making exile even more relevant.

Devil's Play has a big upside, but if it turns out the flashback doesn't happen more than once in a blue moon, I will end up rating Demonfire and Disintegrate higher.

Quote from Fredo

For us exiling has been more relevant than any other extra on red X spells.

The biggest value of exiling is not strongly related to reanimation spells. It's nice to know that the creature you kill will not come back to bug you later, but exiling one creature doesn't turn your opponent's reanimation spells into dead cards. It's hitting creatures with persist, undying, 'leave the battlefield' triggers and in-built reanimation where exiling hurts the most. I've exiled many a kamigawa dragon, where a destroy effect would have lost me the game. Exiling Kitchen Finks where your opponent was likely counting on the extra body and the life is less spectacular, but still quite strong. Kill Bloodghast or Vengevine once and for all. And Innistrad block has given us undying, making exile even more relevant.

Devil's Play has a big upside, but if it turns out the flashback doesn't happen more than once in a blue moon, I will end up rating Demonfire and Disintegrate higher.

I agree with this. Exiling is becoming more and more relevant as time goes on. I think RSZ has the edge over Fireball.

I find that I only want one X spell in my cube nowadays as they are a little bit inefficient and costly. I'd be happy with either RSZ or Devil's Play but the card advantage potential of Play edges it for now.

Quote from Fredo

For us exiling has been more relevant than any other extra on red X spells.

The biggest value of exiling is not strongly related to reanimation spells. It's nice to know that the creature you kill will not come back to bug you later, but exiling one creature doesn't turn your opponent's reanimation spells into dead cards. It's hitting creatures with persist, undying, 'leave the battlefield' triggers and in-built reanimation where exiling hurts the most. I've exiled many a kamigawa dragon, where a destroy effect would have lost me the game. Exiling Kitchen Finks where your opponent was likely counting on the extra body and the life is less spectacular, but still quite strong. Kill Bloodghast or Vengevine once and for all. And Innistrad block has given us undying, making exile even more relevant.

Devil's Play has a big upside, but if it turns out the flashback doesn't happen more than once in a blue moon, I will end up rating Demonfire and Disintegrate higher.

Thanks for the explanation, this should give me a more persuasive argument next time we look at making changes.

Quote from cuttups

As someone else mentioned, red X-spells are common splash cards. I don't like Devil's Play for that reason. You have to be heavy red to have a good chance of getting any decent value out of the flashback.

This is actually one of the reasons I like Devil's Play. There are quite a few red cards that can easily get sucked up by other colors for a splash--RSZ, FTK, Bolt, the Vandal bros. Devil's Play is the rare X-spell that is specifically for the red player. The Grixis deck is not going to steal if unless it's heaviy red. Cards like RSZ sometimes play like they aren't red cards at all. Devil's Play does not.

Cheers,
rant

Quote from rantipole

This is actually one of the reasons I like Devil's Play. There are quite a few red cards that can easily get sucked up by other colors for a splash--RSZ, FTK, Bolt, the Vandal bros. Devil's Play is the rare X-spell that is specifically for the red player. The Grixis deck is not going to steal if unless it's heaviy red. Cards like RSZ sometimes play like they aren't red cards at all. Devil's Play does not.

And sometimes you have a deck where Blaze is what you need and it makes the cut.

Devils Play, because it has flashback.

~W

Devil's Play, the benefit from the flashback is generally more relevant and useful than the upsides from Fireball (2nd best) and RSZ, especially since Devil's Play can be used on early creatures/turns when you have nothing better to do with your mana and can flash it back consistently.

Quote from Fredo

For us exiling has been more relevant than any other extra on red X spells.

The biggest value of exiling is not strongly related to reanimation spells. It's nice to know that the creature you kill will not come back to bug you later, but exiling one creature doesn't turn your opponent's reanimation spells into dead cards. It's hitting creatures with persist, undying, 'leave the battlefield' triggers and in-built reanimation where exiling hurts the most. I've exiled many a kamigawa dragon, where a destroy effect would have lost me the game. Exiling Kitchen Finks where your opponent was likely counting on the extra body and the life is less spectacular, but still quite strong. Kill Bloodghast or Vengevine once and for all. And Innistrad block has given us undying, making exile even more relevant.

This is a very persuasive argument. We're looking to cut Comet Storm for being too mana intensive & I think this case for RSZ will move it to the testing zone.

Thanks for all the input everybody. I'll be keeping Devil's Play as my Blaze variant of choice.

You should do these more often - it got great turnout!

Agreed. This was a great poll, with three valid choices, and no extraneous ones. I really liked seeing the results. It's great that not everyone who chimed in with a post still voted, as it shows that people who might not have a strong enough opinion to post an argument still have their vote counted.

I hope you do more of these!

I'll think about that in the future. Whenever there's a close call between 3 or 4 cards that do something similar and there's only room for 1-2 slots, these poll threads are a good place to discuss them and get real results/discussion.

Thanks for all who participated!

Quote from Nof

That's the best way to discuss card choice I seen so far. I love this thread.

I'm glad it was a hit. I'll try and bring these up whenever the decision is relevant for the cube.

Okay, so would you cut one of these three for the new Bonfire of the Damned?

Quote from tomchaps

Okay, so would you cut one of these three for the new Bonfire of the Damned?

I think I'm cutting Banefire for it. Still mulling it over though