All the cards Gut Shot is good against are all cards that there are already better answers for them that are either more efficient (Electrolyze), or more flexible (Lightning Bolt.
I really think people need to stop huffing the ozone from Electrolyze.
In the meta where ping effects are that relevant, you'd probably be dead by the time you tried casting a 3 mana Forked Bolt.
Dead, or stumbling in tempo lock.
This is a terrible way of looking at it. You are just assuming the decks that play x/1s will just auto win turn 3 and thats just obviously not the case most of the time. In the entire year and a half I have been playing UWR Control in Modern I have NEVER been turn 3'd by Affinity (the only aggressive deck that is weak against ping effects) and have only been turn 4'd on bad mulligans. To be fair though, a lot of players on MTGS pray to Electrolyze like its their god and in all honesty, its not that phenomenal. It does walk on water against Affinity and Melira Pod, but against other decks its mostly another cantrip that can help Lightning Bolt 1 for 1 someone. But to say someone is dead against swarm decks that play x-1's unless you play some terrible, extremely narrow card like Gut Shot because Electrolyze is too slow is just straight up wrong.
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Current standard decks:
Gruul Aggro
EDH General:
Sydri, Galvanic Genius
Modern
Jeskai Control
Jeskai Midrange
Affinity
Esper Teachings
Tribal Zoo
All the cards Gut Shot is good against are all cards that there are already better answers for them that are either more efficient (Electrolyze), or more flexible (Lightning Bolt.
I really think people need to stop huffing the ozone from Electrolyze.
In the meta where ping effects are that relevant, you'd probably be dead by the time you tried casting a 3 mana Forked Bolt.
Dead, or stumbling in tempo lock.
This is a terrible way of looking at it. You are just assuming the decks that play x/1s will just auto win turn 3 and thats just obviously not the case most of the time. In the entire year and a half I have been playing UWR Control in Modern I have NEVER been turn 3'd by Affinity (the only aggressive deck that is weak against ping effects) and have only been turn 4'd on bad mulligans. To be fair though, a lot of players on MTGS pray to Electrolyze like its their god and in all honesty, its not that phenomenal. It does walk on water against Affinity and Melira Pod, but against other decks its mostly another cantrip that can help Lightning Bolt 1 for 1 someone. But to say someone is dead against swarm decks that play x-1's unless you play some terrible, extremely narrow card like Gut Shot because Electrolyze is too slow is just straight up wrong.
Ok yeah I'm being incredibly disingenuous about it.
I mean, at the least if pinging things was that critical, it'd be Forked Bolt at the frontlines due to being a 2-for-1 at 1, arguably a better payment rate (and more advantageous position on the gameplay timeline) than Electrolyze's potential 3-for-3 at 3.
If it got any worse about it, then I'd say Gut Shot would show up, purely because of how fast it can come out. But we'd be talking of x/1's that make a self-shock look painless in comparison to letting the controller untap with that body in play. That's a special kind of environment, one I doubt we'd be in any time soon.
Because, again, we've got Forked Bolt, which covers these situations in probably the best fashion possible. Unless you're part of the Electrolyze cult. Which cycles back into my jab about huffing ozone and all.
All the cards Gut Shot is good against are all cards that there are already better answers for them that are either more efficient (Electrolyze), or more flexible (Lightning Bolt.
I really think people need to stop huffing the ozone from Electrolyze.
In the meta where ping effects are that relevant, you'd probably be dead by the time you tried casting a 3 mana Forked Bolt.
Dead, or stumbling in tempo lock.
This is a terrible way of looking at it. You are just assuming the decks that play x/1s will just auto win turn 3 and thats just obviously not the case most of the time. In the entire year and a half I have been playing UWR Control in Modern I have NEVER been turn 3'd by Affinity (the only aggressive deck that is weak against ping effects) and have only been turn 4'd on bad mulligans. To be fair though, a lot of players on MTGS pray to Electrolyze like its their god and in all honesty, its not that phenomenal. It does walk on water against Affinity and Melira Pod, but against other decks its mostly another cantrip that can help Lightning Bolt 1 for 1 someone. But to say someone is dead against swarm decks that play x-1's unless you play some terrible, extremely narrow card like Gut Shot because Electrolyze is too slow is just straight up wrong.
Ok yeah I'm being incredibly disingenuous about it.
I mean, at the least if pinging things was that critical, it'd be Forked Bolt at the frontlines due to being a 2-for-1 at 1, arguably a better payment rate (and more advantageous position on the gameplay timeline) than Electrolyze's potential 3-for-3 at 3.
If it got any worse about it, then I'd say Gut Shot would show up, purely because of how fast it can come out. But we'd be talking of x/1's that make a self-shock look painless in comparison to letting the controller untap with that body in play. That's a special kind of environment, one I doubt we'd be in any time soon.
Because, again, we've got Forked Bolt, which covers these situations in probably the best fashion possible. Unless you're part of the Electrolyze cult. Which cycles back into my jab about huffing ozone and all.
The reason Electrolyze is more popular than both Gut Shot and Forked Bolt is that is more flexible. In fact, the only case where Forked Bolt is even more efficient than Electrolyze is in the exact scenario you described with 2 x/1s. Seeing as how Forked Bolt only 1 for 1's an x/2 (where as Electrolyze still 2 for 1's) and can be almost dead against non-creature match ups (where as Electrolyze can still cycle itself), I'm not sure how it can possibly be better.
Granted, if all we're talking about is shooting x/1's in a vacuum, then sure, I can concede to Forked Bolt's efficiency. But even in the matches you want to shoot x/1's, like Affinity, you can't even shoot the man lands with Forked Bolt so what are you targeting? It's pretty much just on Memnite and Vault Skirge duty at that point, which isn't really all that useful.
Which brings me back to Gut Shot, which is a step further in this direction of hyper-efficiency at the cost of flexibility. You pretty much hit the nail on the head with your explanation of it, but thats the very same reason why Electrolyze is just a much better card than Forked Bolt (and Gut Shot for that matter). Modern is a HUGE format and you cannot afford to run cards that are so narrow. Electrolyze pretty much does the same job as the other 2 cards, but since it cantrips it can always do something useful in every matchup. That being said, sometimes I even feel like Electrolyze is too narrow, which is why I think it's wrong to run 4.
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Current standard decks:
Gruul Aggro
EDH General:
Sydri, Galvanic Genius
Modern
Jeskai Control
Jeskai Midrange
Affinity
Esper Teachings
Tribal Zoo
I have played with gut shot in the past and the only deck where it felt great out of the sideboard was actually affinity. It is a clean answer to Kataki with a bit of an extra upside against other decks with x/1s. Actually, it's one of the only good answers, if not the only good one against the hate bear. Outside of that, I'm not sure there are too many good places to put it.
I played a rogue Tier 3 deck that was essentially Naya Human Blitz. Four Gut Shot were very good in that deck because it was mana hungry turns 1-3, the turns in which I would try to assemble lethal damage or close to it. The deck list also had 4 Lightning Bolt because it is THAT good. Gut Shot was very integral in the strategy whether it was slowing Pod or Affinity down or making Scapeshift sacrifice their Sakura Tribe Elder early or moving a SCM away from blocking a 5/5 Champion of the Parish. The card was very good in about 75% of the matchups that I played against. However this being a tier 3 strategy, I doubt Gut Shot has the same effectiveness in the board of other decks, some of them Tier 1 decks.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
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This is a terrible way of looking at it. You are just assuming the decks that play x/1s will just auto win turn 3 and thats just obviously not the case most of the time. In the entire year and a half I have been playing UWR Control in Modern I have NEVER been turn 3'd by Affinity (the only aggressive deck that is weak against ping effects) and have only been turn 4'd on bad mulligans. To be fair though, a lot of players on MTGS pray to Electrolyze like its their god and in all honesty, its not that phenomenal. It does walk on water against Affinity and Melira Pod, but against other decks its mostly another cantrip that can help Lightning Bolt 1 for 1 someone. But to say someone is dead against swarm decks that play x-1's unless you play some terrible, extremely narrow card like Gut Shot because Electrolyze is too slow is just straight up wrong.
Gruul Aggro
EDH General:
Sydri, Galvanic Genius
Modern
Jeskai Control
Jeskai Midrange
Affinity
Esper Teachings
Tribal Zoo
Ok yeah I'm being incredibly disingenuous about it.
I mean, at the least if pinging things was that critical, it'd be Forked Bolt at the frontlines due to being a 2-for-1 at 1, arguably a better payment rate (and more advantageous position on the gameplay timeline) than Electrolyze's potential 3-for-3 at 3.
If it got any worse about it, then I'd say Gut Shot would show up, purely because of how fast it can come out. But we'd be talking of x/1's that make a self-shock look painless in comparison to letting the controller untap with that body in play. That's a special kind of environment, one I doubt we'd be in any time soon.
Because, again, we've got Forked Bolt, which covers these situations in probably the best fashion possible. Unless you're part of the Electrolyze cult. Which cycles back into my jab about huffing ozone and all.
The reason Electrolyze is more popular than both Gut Shot and Forked Bolt is that is more flexible. In fact, the only case where Forked Bolt is even more efficient than Electrolyze is in the exact scenario you described with 2 x/1s. Seeing as how Forked Bolt only 1 for 1's an x/2 (where as Electrolyze still 2 for 1's) and can be almost dead against non-creature match ups (where as Electrolyze can still cycle itself), I'm not sure how it can possibly be better.
Granted, if all we're talking about is shooting x/1's in a vacuum, then sure, I can concede to Forked Bolt's efficiency. But even in the matches you want to shoot x/1's, like Affinity, you can't even shoot the man lands with Forked Bolt so what are you targeting? It's pretty much just on Memnite and Vault Skirge duty at that point, which isn't really all that useful.
Which brings me back to Gut Shot, which is a step further in this direction of hyper-efficiency at the cost of flexibility. You pretty much hit the nail on the head with your explanation of it, but thats the very same reason why Electrolyze is just a much better card than Forked Bolt (and Gut Shot for that matter). Modern is a HUGE format and you cannot afford to run cards that are so narrow. Electrolyze pretty much does the same job as the other 2 cards, but since it cantrips it can always do something useful in every matchup. That being said, sometimes I even feel like Electrolyze is too narrow, which is why I think it's wrong to run 4.
Gruul Aggro
EDH General:
Sydri, Galvanic Genius
Modern
Jeskai Control
Jeskai Midrange
Affinity
Esper Teachings
Tribal Zoo
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)