The power of Pulse

[r00tg04t]

the other day i saw a "CounterPhoenix" deck running 4 Prophetic Bolt over the 4 Impulse.. i was like "WTF!" heh, then when i go to forbid his spell (i was also playing CP) he fact or fictions in response... i belive it was a Suffocating Blast, Prophetic Bolt, Seal of Fire, Island, Keg.. Piles:
Keg, Bolt
Seal, Blast, Island
he picks the keg bolt one!.. i don't mean to make fun of people or anything just saying, some people think Prophetic Bolt is amazing.. any comments guys?

 

[RabidKimba]

Well, bolt is strong in IBC, and even in T2 when put in the right deck, but Impulse is much, much better, IMO. Sounds like these kids that I know that'll trade you a Urza's Rage (mint) for a random dual land in bad or even poor condition. That's why I actually have a GOOD collection.

 

[Gizmo]

Prophetic Bolt is a powerful spell if it does not get countered.

IMHO the Keg/Bolt pile of cards is far far FAR better than the other pile. In a CP mirrormatch none of those cards are great, and in fact the best card in the whole flop might well be the Island, but certainly the Keg/Bolt pile is far better than the other pile.
Suffocating Blast is the terrible spellin that FoF. Absolutely terrible. Trash. I think if you think the other pile is stronger you are valuing Seal of Fire VERY highly.
But then having just done talking to you on IRC I can believe you might think Suff Blast is good.


In IBC Prophetic Bolt is widely played, in T2 its possibly not as strong largely due to the presence of Static Orb. In extended I would NEVER play it instead of Impulse, not to say I would never play it, peroid, but I dont think it would ever be comparable to Impulse because they do entirely different things. I might play Prophetic Bolt ahead of other burn spells, but replacing Impulse with it is like taking out Terror to play Dark Hatchling, they are totally different slots in the deck.

 

[Mr.Gnome]

Impulse is obviously the better card in this type of deck, prophetic bolt cannot be compared to it.

 

[Zadok001]

Agree with Gizmo. Those two cards shouldn't be competing for the same slot in ANY deck. One costs two, the other FIVE. One is an early game and/or "In response" spell, the other is a late game powerhouse against non-Blue decks. I can see Impulse being replaced (possible Accumulated Knowledge?), but it probably isn't a good idea. Replacing it with a 5cc spell that serves a different function fundamentally changes the inner workings of the deck.

 

[Thallid Ice Cream Man]

First of all, you say that you are using CounterPhoenix, right?
I would think that CounterPhoenix would need to use so much red mana on Shard Phoenix that it couldn't think about using a card with such a prohibitive casting cost that doesn't even complement that deck very well...

What happened after the FoF?
Did he respond to the Forbid again?
Keg and Bolt was probably the better pile, and Suffocating Blast does suck, but I think r00tg04t presumed that he had cast the fof to look for some way to counter the forbid, and unless he had huge amounts of land out at the time, another prophetic bolt wouldn't have helped him with that.
Although I doubt a Keg would have helped in any way other than to force r00tg04t to use whatever permanents he had.
If he had actually wanted to counter the forbid, unless this was late enough in the game that he could comfortably cast P. Bolt, he should have taken the Suffocating Blast, despite the fact that it sucks. (So what if he had to kill his Phoenix; he obviously didn't care about mana anyway.)
Before we can easily analyze this situation, we need to know what else was happening in the game.
But I agree with you, Prophetic Bolt is usually worse than Impulse.

 

[r00tg04t]

The point of this was for me to find out why this guy was using bolts instead of impulse, not to determine if he was a bad player or if suffocating blast sucks (Wich we know it does), and there were no permanents in play, therefor suffocating blast would be useless as it needs two targets to be played and the keg would have been useless as well, however i was at like 12 or so life, and didn't want him having the bolt to put me down to 8 and dig through 4 cards for a rage etc..