Barbed Lightning
Instant
Choose one —
• Barbed Lightning deals 3 damage to target creature.
• Barbed Lightning deals 3 damage to target player or planeswalker.
Entwine 
(Choose both if you pay the entwine cost.)
- CMC
- 3
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Darksteel
- Price
- $0.13
- EDHREC rank
- #21021
Barbed Lightning deals 3 damage split any way you choose between targets — creatures, players, or both — and can be kicked to deal 3 more to a single target for a total of 6. That flexibility at instant speed makes it a passable budget option, but five mana kicked is steep when most formats offer cleaner, cheaper removal.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
In Commander, Barbed Lightning sits in the lower tier of red removal — the split-damage mode is occasionally useful for clearing a utility creature and tagging a player, but most red decks have better options at this price point. In Pauper, where the card pool is constrained, Barbed Lightning is more competitive as a flexible instant, though Lightning Bolt and similar one-mana spells still dominate the format. Legacy and Vintage have no interest in it — the efficiency bar is simply too high. Barbed Lightning is the kind of card that earns a slot in a strict budget build or a precon-adjacent pile, not an optimized list.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.13 bulk tier
At $0.13, Barbed Lightning is deep bulk — you're paying for cardboard and nothing else. It holds no monetary value worth tracking, but at that price the cost of slotting it into a budget Commander deck is essentially zero.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.