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Lightning Storm

Instant

Lightning Storm deals X damage to any target, where X is 3 plus the number of charge counters on Lightning Storm.
Discard a land card: Put two charge counters on Lightning Storm. You may choose a new target for it. Any player may activate this ability but only if Lightning Storm is on the stack.

CMC
3
Mana cost
{1}{R}{R}
Color identity
R
Rarity
uncommon
Set
Coldsnap
Price
$0.36
EDHREC rank
#21396
Buy on TCGplayer
Lightning Storm card art
Lightning Storm hits for arbitrarily large damage the moment you have a land-discard engine running, and it wins games on the spot rather than grinding toward a finish. The cost is real: it telegraphs itself on the stack and folds to a single counterspell, so it lives and dies by how well your shell protects it — Stormchaser Drake-style cantrip shells rarely run it for that reason.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern legal
pioneer not legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

Lightning Storm is a combo finisher, not a fair card, and that distinction drives everything about where it shows up. In Commander it earns a slot in dedicated Discard or Storm-adjacent builds that can assemble infinite land-discard loops — once you have the engine, Lightning Storm is the cheapest one-card kill at instant speed. Legacy and Vintage are the only constructed formats where it has seen real play, specifically as the win condition in Dredge and Ad Nauseam-style combo lists that can fuel it without breaking a sweat. Modern legality is technically correct, but the competition from faster, more redundant finishers has kept Lightning Storm off serious lists there. Pioneer and Standard never got it, and Pauper's exclusion is irrelevant given the card's role.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$0.36 bulk tier

At $0.36, Lightning Storm is firmly bulk — you're paying almost nothing for a card with a narrow but genuine competitive history. That price is stable; demand is too niche to spike it, but the combo-piece identity keeps it from dropping to true floor.

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Sources

Mentioned

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Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.