Barrage Tyrant

soultwist

I have a question about his usage, specifically his ability.

Activate 1: Destroy the first colorless creature you control and deal damage equal to it's Power times 3 to the first creature your opponent controls.

Is this something I am actually wanting to do, or is it a risk/downfall to using the card? I've seen a number of times about black's "pay for power" I assume this must somehow figure into red's mantra? Destruction for power?

There is no choice, you pop the activated gem and your first colorless creature goes away regardless if you wanted it to or even if the opponent has a creature out. Other spells and such have safeguards built in, ie they won't cast if there is a reason they won't work. (your graveyard is empty, opponent's hand is full, etc) Others even confirm if you want to cast them. (Days, etc)

With red being great at creature removal is there ever really a time this is beneficial? Pia and Kiran is similar, is there ever a time where either are valuable?

Is there anyone using these cards that can help explain your setup and how it's working for you?

majincob

Maybe could be palatable with Scion tokens that give 3 mana when they die. But red does not make them and there are only 2 colorless cards that do it, both of which make 3 scions and they both cost a lot so... not great. I'm not sure but I think scion token stacks only give 3 mana regardless of how many scions are there. At least scions have defender.

Maybe play it with bonded construct, but seems like a lot of work when red already has lots of direct damage spells.

Plastic

There's no definite use or not with this. It's situational.

Jazzpha

I've only had it matter once, which was when I was playing it along with Dragonmaster Outcast against a deck running Hangarback Walker. Since the Dragon summoned by Outcast is colorless, Barrage Tyrant let me kill the Hangarback and its Thopters over two turns, which won me the game in the long run.

But it does seem a bit clunky to run a bunch of colorless creatures in a Red deck just to be able to reliably trigger the ability, especially since you're trading board control and tempo for a single-use hard removal.

So yeah, as Plastic said, it's situational. The good news is, since it's activate one and not landfall, it's more difficult to activate by accident if you're trying to avoid it.