Thermal Blast
Instant
Thermal Blast deals 3 damage to target creature.
Threshold — Thermal Blast deals 5 damage instead if there are seven or more cards in your graveyard.
- CMC
- 5
- Mana cost
- Color identity
- R
- Rarity
- common
- Set
- Odyssey
- Price
- $0.05
- EDHREC rank
- #30331
Thermal Blast deals 3 damage to a creature for five mana at sorcery speed — or 5 damage if you have a Mountain in play, which you almost certainly do in any red deck. Even at its ceiling, five mana for a sorcery-speed five-damage shot is a rate that red has long since left behind.
Format Analysis
Where it lives, where it can’t
| Format | Verdict |
|---|---|
| commander | legal |
| legacy | legal |
| modern | not legal |
| pioneer | not legal |
| standard | not legal |
| vintage | legal |
| pauper | legal |
| oathbreaker | legal |
Thermal Blast is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Pauper, and Oathbreaker, but legality and playability are different things. In Pauper it faces a commons pool stacked with efficient burn like Lightning Bolt and Skred, and it can't compete. In Commander, five mana at sorcery speed for conditional single-target damage is nowhere near the bar — a format where creatures routinely have 5+ toughness and your removal needs to answer Avacyn or an indestructible commander. Thermal Blast is outclassed in every format where it's legal.
Key Combos
Combo lines featuring this card
Price Context
Current price
$0.05 bulk tier
At $0.05, Thermal Blast is deep bulk — the kind of card that fills a draft chaff box. There's no demand pressuring that price upward, and there never will be.
Explore
Sources
Mentioned
Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.