Armed // Dangerous
Two pump-and-Lure effects that read as forgettable apart and lethal together, stapled into a single split card whose payoff lives entirely in pointing the halves at different creatures. Cast alone, neither half earns a second look: Armed is a small bump with double strike tacked on, Dangerous is a Lure variant that drags every able blocker onto one chosen attacker. The combination is the design. Aim Dangerous at a small, expendable decoy, and the entire defending board is forced to swarm a creature you do not mind trading away. The big threat carrying Armed then attacks into an empty blocking assignment and connects, unblocked, for two combat steps of damage to the face. The forced block, normally a liability that funnels you straight into a wall of defenders, gets redirected onto chaff while the kill lands elsewhere. The fuse cost prices that pairing, and the discipline it demands, into one card: you pay both colors of the Gruul pair and a board worth the spend, and the whole engine collapses the instant you point both halves at the same creature. Deciding who gets forcibly swarmed and who walks through is the entire decision the card asks of you. Older Lure effects only flirted with pairing into a combat trick; this one bundles the redirect and the unblockable finisher together and charges for the privilege of casting both at once.

