A Shiny Copper - Ride the Lightning
23 May 2026One of my favorite ways of playing Magic the Gathering is chaos draft. I love the variety and the joy of trying to put together cards from twenty plus different sets into one cohesive deck.
I also love drafting Izzet (a blue-red deck). I love drafting spell slinger decks in just about any game, but chaos draft in Magic the Gathering is a great format to play Izzet, since so many blue-red archetypes focus on sorceries and instants.
I also also love Time Spiral Remastered. The mechanics, retro frames, color shifted cards are all my jam.
It should come as no surprise then that I’ve drafted and played the common spell Riddle of Lightning many times.
Ride the Lightning!
Riddle of Lightning is an instant card that costs three generic mana and two red mana.
When you play Riddle of Lightning, you choose a target (a creature, planeswalker, or player would be most likely). Then, you look at the top three cards of your deck. You can choose to place them on the top or bottom of your deck in any order. Then, you reveal the top card of your deck. You take the cost of that card, and deal damage equal to the cost to your original target.
Is it expensive? Sure, five mana is a lot for a removal spell. But you do get the additional utility of sculpting the top three cards of your deck.
I love Riddle of Lightning because it takes a staple card, an instant speed red removal spell dealing damage, and turns it into a high stakes thrill to see if you can pull off the damage you need.
Let’s say there’s something that you need to deal three damage to. It could be a threatening flier, or an opponent’s face close to defeat. You play Riddle of Lightning, and it resolves. You pick up the top three cards of your deck.
Before we analyze your odds here, let’s set the stage for the cards you are going to see:
- Since you have at least five mana, and it’s probably turn five or later, your deck probably has about 25 cards in it (assuming this is a limited environment).
- You have at least five lands on the battlefield and not in your deck.
- And for argument’s sake, let’s say you drafted responsibly and have a nice mana curve, with 11 spells costing 1 or 2 mana, and 12 spells costing 3 or more mana.
- You’ve drawn an equal mix of lands (let’s say five this game) and spells (four 1 or 2 mana spells, and five three or more mana spells).
- Your remaining deck would then be 11 lands, 7 spells costing 1 or 2 mana, and 7 spells costing 3 or more mana.
At this point, when you cast Riddle of Lightning, and look at your top three cards, your chances of missing are (18/25) × (17/24) × (16/23), or about 35.5%. This means that you’ll hit about 64.5% from looking at the top three cards.
There’s a secret, too – if you really want to push your luck, and whiffed on the top three cards, you can choose to place all three cards on the bottom and take your chance on whatever the fourth card is. Having blasted a five toughness beater back to their maker this way, I can confirm that it feels awesome.
This means that in our hypothetical scenario, we have one more event – a 15/22 chance of missing (or a 7/22 chance of finding the card we need). This moves the odds of completely missing to 24.2%, or making it up to 75.8%.
Some players might decide that for five mana, they’d rather not have a 1/4 chance of missing dealing three damage. That’s a reasonable decision that a deckbuilder would make.
For this player, we can compare Riddle of Lightning with another red instant, Lightning Blast.
Lightning Blast is almost identical in inputs (mana and targeting), and in output (dealing damage). But it lacks the element of uncertainty and surprise that Riddle of Lightning has. Lightning Blast is, for lack of a better word, static.
To be clear, if I get passed a Lightning Blast, I’m probably going to feel okay taking it. There’s a version of Lightning Blast in every set. Cheap red removal spells like Shock and expensive red removal spells like Lightning Blast will be printed in every set. What makes Riddle of Lightning great is that it takes a staple card and makes it fun. You get two chances to make your play happen.
The escalation from high probability (Scry 3), to pushing your luck for the riskier play (Put the scried cards on the bottom and pray), heightens your thrill. These gameplay moments that Riddle of Lightning enables makes it an electric card.
Some Chance is Fun, but Pure Randomness can be Chaos
Let’s move to the other end of comparisons by comparing Riddle of Lightning with a red removal spell with an element of chance, Whammy Burn.
Whammy Burn is a test card only available in a Mystery Booster (and yes, I’ve seen this opened at a draft table during our store’s chaos draft). How Whammy Burn works is that you assemble a five card deck of each basic land (Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, Forest). You declare a target, then you shuffle your whammy deck, then reveal a card from the top of this deck. If it’s an Island, you bust and do 0 damage. If it’s any other land, you can either stop or push your luck. You deal damage to the target equal to the number of cards revealed.
Like Riddle of Lightning, Whammy Burn does not deal a deterministic amount of damage. Also like Riddle of Lightning, Whammy Burn may deal 0 damage. However, the odds of you dealing 0 with Whammy Burn are much higher than Riddle of Lightning.
- 1 Damage - 80% (4/5)
- 2 Damage - 60% (4/5 * 3/4)
- 3 Damage - 40% (4/5 * 3/4 * 2/3)
- 4 Damage - 20% (4/5 * 3/4 * 2/3 * 1/2)
- 5 Damage - 0% (4/5 * 3/4 * 2/3 * 1/2 * 0/1)
As you can see, there’s upside, but the downside is pretty shocking, especially compared to the staple cheap red removal, Shock.
For the exact same mana, you can do 2 damage 100% of the time. The risk to reward ratio here doesn’t seem to favor Whammy Burn. I don’t want to do nothing 40% of the time when I want to cast a Shock, and I definitely don’t want to do nothing 60% of the time when I want to cast a Bolt.
Some risk versus reward is fun, but here the risk is astronomically high compared to a Riddle of Lightning // Lightning Blast comparison. Riddle of Lightning may not do as much damage as you need it to, but it will almost never do 0 damage. You also get upside with the deck sculpting and scrying. Comparatively, Whammy Burn // Shock is a much less favorable comparison.
Conclusion
Riddle of Lightning is another great common card that shows us that with a little inspiration, we can take a staple card and make it shine.
Riddle of Lightning takes a common card type, the red damage spell, and adds two elements of chance. Is it a complete roll of the dice? No, your initial decision will most likely do an adequate, but not high, amount of damage. If you don’t like the cards you see, you can push your luck, ride the lightning, and flip over that fourth card.
At the same time, Riddle of Lightning doesn’t completely rely on chance or push your luck. Whammy Burn shows us that too much randomness can make a simply worse card that doesn’t make it out of testing.
Personally, I can’t wait for my store’s next chaos draft. Hopefully I can push my luck with another Izzet spellslinging deck and get another shot to draft and cast Riddle of Lightning.