Breaking of the Fellowship

Red almost never gets to point-remove a creature outright, so it borrows one: the damage comes off an opponent's own creature, using that creature's power as the burn. It is a directed shot fired from the enemy's side of the board, a two-mana sorcery that turns a big attacker into a gun aimed at another creature that player controls. The math is entirely donor-dependent. Point a 1/1 at anything and you have wasted a card; point a fatty at their smaller creature and you kill it clean, one-for-one, without ever touching your own board. This is the honest cost of putting hard removal in a color built to trade damage for damage: the red player supplies the spell and the targets, but the opponent supplies the power, and against a wide board of small bodies the card does nothing worth doing. The Ring tempts you clause bolts on a second axis, the incremental board and library advantage of wearing the Ring, so even a middling cast advances a longer plan. Structurally it belongs with the redirect-and-weaponize effects that turn an opponent's own stats against them rather than granting your side any: the payoff scales with how greedy the opposing curve is, which makes it a punish card first and a removal spell second.