Pyromancers are, by all accounts, interesting
people. I mean, our own Chandra is apparently a
founder of Dominaria's Justice League, and
they're always cutting swathes (cf. Future
Sight) and launching assaults that make for good
gameplay on our tables. This card seem to be in
Oath of the Gatewatch to give some added bonuses
and incentives to decks that make use of the
surge keyword. But its potential applications go
far beyond that. It opens up a whole range of
deck concepts and gives amazing new life to some
very old cards - ever wish that Sleight of Hand
also did damage? Now it does. Looking for a fun
spell-based combo deck, but finding storm too
powerful for your casual table? Don't throw away
your Rift Bolts, just pair them with this card.
Pyromancers are rapidly becoming indispensable
in all sorts of play settings.
Today's card of the day is Pyromancer's Assault
which is a four mana Red enchantment that deals
two damage to target creature or player whenever
you cast a second spell for the turn. This
requires some support to keep multiple cards in
hand to benefit from the Shock effect each turn,
so a Howling Mine effect or something similar
would work well. By itself this just
doesn't offer enough to justify the mana cost or
including it in most decks, though Izzet with
the addition of Blue mana grants much needed
draw power. Overall this could add some extra
firepower to Red builds with increased card
draw, but the higher mana cost and dependent
nature will keep it out of current formats.
In Limited this is a fairly weak card as it
forces the user to modify their tempo into
playing two cards every other turn at best
instead of as needed. It is similar to
facing heavy countermagic and not worth the slot
in a deck for a Shock every two turns. An
easy pass in Booster and relegated to the
sidedeck in Sealed.
