Gempalm Incinerator
Most cycling cards reward you for not playing them: pay the cost, draw, move on. This one rewards the deck for being what it already is. The cycling trigger scales to the number of Goblins in play, so in a flooded Goblin field the discard becomes a growing Lightning Bolt, pointing enough damage at a single blocker to clear whatever the opponent put in front of you, and it costs nothing in card advantage because you draw anyway. That dual nature is what earns it a slot in a tribal deck: a live 2/1 body when you need pressure, flexible spot removal when you do not, with no dead-draw downside. The colored cycling cost matters too, tying the conversion to actually committing to red rather than splashing it. It belongs to a lineage of creatures that cycle for a tribe-scaled effect, but the Goblin entry is the one that mattered most, because Goblins were a real aggressive shell that could field enough bodies to make X lethal against blockers. The problem it answers is the old aggro bind of redundancy versus flood: a hand stuffed with creatures wants more threats; a board stalled against small blockers wants an out. By bolting removal onto a draw spell onto a creature, it lets one card answer whichever question the game asks, which is exactly the flexibility a low-curve tribal deck usually cannot afford.

Rules text
Format Status
More formatsFewer formats
Other printings
- The List#DMR-122
- The List#DDT-39
- Dominaria Remastered#322
- Dominaria Remastered#122
- Historic Anthology 3#16
- Duel Decks: Merfolk vs. Goblins#39
- Duel Decks Anthology: Elves vs. Goblins#37
- Duel Decks: Elves vs. Goblins#37









