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Pojo's Magic The Gathering Card of the Day
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Image from Wizards.com
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Prophetic Bolt
Apocalypse
Reviewed August 30, 2005
Constructed: 2.25
Casual: 3.25
Limited: 4
Ratings are
based on a 1 to 5 scale
1 being the worst. 3 ...
average.
5 is the highest rating
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Card of the Day Reviews
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Jeff Zandi
5
Time Pro Tour
Veteran |
Prophetic Bolt
I have loved blue and red together for a long
time. Going way back, I never figured out a way
to do it successfully, myself, until Justin Gary
won the U.S. Nationals with a blue/red deck led
by its MVP Frenetic Efreet.
Prophetic Bolt is just about the best thing you
can do with five mana at the end of your
opponent's turn. How can you lose? Four points
to a creature OR PLAYER and the ability to
"Impulse", to replace the spent Prophetic Bolt
with your choice of one of the next four cards
in your library. The only thing that isn't
absolutely fabulous about this card is the
casting cost.
I'm not complaining, mind you, because this IS a
great spell, but this card is obviously only
going to fit in a narrow group of decks thanks
to the need for blue and red mana. Furthermore,
this card, which was an obvious BOMB card in
Invasion block limited play several years ago,
is a little expensive for current constructed
formats in which it is legal.
CONSTRUCTED: 3.5
CASUAL: 3.5
LIMITED: 4.0
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Tim
Stoltzfus |
Prophetic Bolt
There were many interesting efforts to mix card
effects in the Invasion block when mixing up
colors. In the case of Prophetic Bolt, it was a
cross between Impulse and Lightning Blast, and
somehow managed to lose a mana off the combined
casting cost in the process. Prophetic Bolt is a
very solid card, but in most tournament formats
it never caught on simply because it was a bit
expensive, and Blue/Red wasn’t the best two
color combination available. It also had to vie
for space against cards like Fire/Ice and
Flametongue Kavu, which both turned out to be
environment-defining cards. Prophetic Bolt is
very solid in multiplayer games, which tend to
be a bit slower, and allow for slightly more
expensive cards to be played. In limited, if
you’re in the colors it is an automatic first
pick.
Constructed -- 2.5
Casual –3.5
Limited – 4
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Christine
Gerhardt |
Prophetic Bolt
Apocalypse gravitated to the use of opposing (or
enemy) colors to pull things off. It created
some strange bedfellows, especially in draft
where the first two sets of the block, Invasion
and Planeshift, used friendly colors for the
first 2 packs. You drafted colors next to each
other on the color wheel, then you opened
Apocalypse, and you ran into a lot of cards that
had one of your colors, but also colors you
weren't drafting. Very weird, and sometimes a
bit frustrating, but the block tried to give you
some mana smoothers to help you through the
quandry.
Bolt uses very typical abilities of the opposing
colors Red and Blue - the Red gives you the
destruction, and the Blue gives you card draw -
all combined into a single card. The feeling is
a bit strange in my opinion, since you may have
a need to use one of the abilities, but not the
other...it just comes as a side thought. Not
that it's not useful...it's just weird and a bit
unfocused. It's cost is a bit much too, when you
want just one or the other ability, you are
forced to basically pay for both, want it or
not.
The highly anticipated Ravnica block seems to be
heading in a similar direction as Invasion block
of lots of mulitcolor cards (we'll have to see
if they go with opposing colors in one of their
sets). This time they really are making sure you
have the tools to work with the varied mana
problems. Birds of Paradise will be back, and a
toned down version of Dual Lands is set to hit,
too - now THAT is cool! 9th Edition has brought
back all the pain lands. I really expect Ravnica
to bring Magic into one of the best times since
Invasion block.
Constructed - 2
Casual - 3
Limited - 4
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