Built to Smash
A pump spell with two payment tiers built into one mana, and the second tier is the real design. The base mode (+3/+3 at instant speed on an attacker) is the kind of combat trick aggressive red has run since the earliest sets: it turns a chump block into a dead blocker or pushes a few extra points through. The trample rider is where it stops being generic, because it only fires when the target is an artifact creature, so the card is a reward stapled to a deck-building constraint. Cast it on a vanilla beater and you have a serviceable trick; cast it on a metal body and you also get evasion, which converts the +3 into damage the defender cannot soak with a single blocker. That conditional is the whole hinge: it asks you to load your board with artifact creatures to unlock the upside, then pays you for it precisely when you most want to alpha strike. The math is honest either way (one mana for three points, plus a possible four-damage swing past a chump when the trample fires), and the artifact clause is what gives the card an identity beyond yet another red trick. It belongs to a particular flavor of red aggro, the version that wants its creatures made of metal, and it is sized to reward that commitment without asking for more than a single mana when the window opens.


