Lightning bolt vs. shock
Standard forum
Posted on July 4, 2016, 10:33 a.m. by FireWolf1000
Does anyone else feel that shock doesn't make sense compared to lightning bolt?
From developers:
"A somewhat recent example is that when Lightning Bolt was in standard (with Magic 2010 and 2011, long before my time here), Im told that the development team of the time had to pull back on a lot of other areas where red could have been powerful. The result was that a lot of decks splashed red just for Lightning Bolt, and there wasnt as much reason to be base red. That dynamic can often cut back on deck diversity. In general wed rather spread out the power among lots of different things each color can do, rather than concentrate it in one card or area."
So, you get Shock because bolt is too good.
accelerando11 says... #2
The point is that they felt that Lightning Bolt was too strong, as it was always the "right choice" for decks, so they decided to start giving more options such as Shock or Lightning Strike to give more deck variety, rather than having Lightning Bolt always be the right choice 100% of the time. I'm pretty sure there's an article about it somewhere.
July 4, 2016 10:45 a.m.