Ajani's Response

Unconditional creature destruction at instant speed has always sat around four or five mana, and the reasoning holds: an answer that kills anything, at any time, with no clause about what it can hit is worth paying full freight for. This one keeps that ceiling but reads a discount off the board. Against a creature that has tapped (to attack, to crew, to pay an activation cost), the price collapses by three, and premium instant-speed removal becomes a two-mana play. What makes the design tidy is that the reduction is a static property of the spell, checked as you cast it, not a triggered event you have to set up: hold it while your opponent's board is full of untapped blockers and you pay the full amount; wait until they commit and the same spell arrives at a rate that feels punitive. It inverts the usual removal-versus-tempo pull. A creature is most threatening in the swing, and this rewards you for holding until exactly that moment, then answering the attacker cheaply, while a patient defensive posture on their side keeps you at full cost and gives you every reason to sit on it. The card belongs to a small lineage of spells whose cost is a function of board state rather than the caster's mana, and it expresses the idea with almost no overhead: no keyword, no counters, no tracking, just a number that shifts on whether the target has already spent its turn.