Avenging Arrow

The "dealt damage this turn" clause is the entire negotiation here: this is removal that cannot fire preemptively, only after a creature has already done something. It refuses to clear a fresh threat that has not yet swung or blocked, which makes it structurally a punisher rather than a preventative. The natural window is the opponent's combat, after attacks and blocks resolve: an attacker that connected, a blocker that survived the exchange, anything that dealt damage this turn becomes legal. White rarely gets unconditional destruction at instant speed, and the design pays for that rate by binding it to a window the opponent opens themselves. Compared with the open-ended kill spells in black, the trade-off is timing discipline: you are rewarded for holding it through combat rather than for proactively answering a threat on your own turn. That makes it sharpest against creatures with persistent battlefield value (a recurring attacker, a problematic blocker that lived) and useless against a threat that has merely been cast and not yet acted. It is a clean expression of white's removal philosophy from this era, where the color answers what has done something rather than what simply exists.