The price for Blazing Shoal, a red Magic the Gathering card that has been banned in the Modern format for over a decade, has shot up from $1.30 to $14.90 in a week, thanks to a newly revealed Izzet creature in the upcoming Final Fantasy Magic set. Blazing Shoal makes a lethal combo with Vivi Ornitier, pumping up Vivi’s power without any mana investment, in turn letting the little wizard generate a heap of free mana via its activated ability.
We normally expect MTG sets to at least make it into shops before we start to feel their impact on Magic the Gathering‘s secondary market. It’s a sign of how hyped people are for the upcoming MTG Final Fantasy set that they’re buying up cards to upgrade decks they don’t even own yet.
Blazing Shoal is a red Instant with the obscure Arcane subtype, first printed in Betrayers of Kamigawa in 2005 and only since reissued via The List. It costs two red and X generic mana, and gives a creature +X/+0 until end of term. Rather than pay its mana cost, you can exile a red card with mana value X from your hand.
It hit the MTG banlist for Modern in 2011, not long after Scars of Mirrodin block released. Scars block introduced the MTG keyword Infect to the game – creatures with Infect deal damage to players in the form of Poison counters. Since a player only needs ten Poison Counters to lose the game, Blazing Shoal’s ability to pump a creature by a ridiculous amount for zero mana could represent lethal damage on turn two.
Blazing Shoal pairs beautifully with the new Final Fantasy Legend Vivi Ornitier. Vivi is a 0/3 Legendary Creature Wizard who costs one generic, one blue, and one red mana to cast. He has a triggered ability: whenever you cast a noncreature spell you place a +1/+1 counter on Vivi, and it deals one damage to each opponent. And he has an activated ability which costs no mana and generates X mana in any combination of red and/or blue, where X is his power.
The play pattern here is to get Vivi in play, pitch a huge red spell card to cast a free Blazing Shoal and make Vivi enormous, then use Vivi’s ability to generate loads of free mana and cast more giant spells, storm off, or simply swing and deal heaps of damage to your opponent with the now embiggened mage.
In Commander his deck should contain plenty of red cards with high mana values and casting cost reduction, such as Blasphemous Act or Volcanic Salvo – you want cards that you can pitch to get a huge Blazing Shoal pump, but which you also have a good chance to cast normally.
Vivi doesn’t feel quite broken enough to see play in Legacy, and Blazing Shoal isn’t legal in Pioneer or Standard, so the only hope for this pair to appear in constructed is if Blazing Shoal is unbanned in Modern. Could it happen? With the current power level of cards in Modern, perhaps. What do you think? We’d love to hear your opinion in the official Wargamer Discord community.
Want to know when you can get your hands on Vivi? We have an up to date guide to the MTG release schedule that will help you out.
Source: Wargamer
