Burn Trail

Conspire is the mechanic that asks what a removal spell is worth once you already have a board, and this is its most literal answer: tap two red creatures and the bolt fires twice, hitting two separate targets if you want it. The base rate is unremarkable for four mana that throws three damage. The whole calculus shifts once the copy comes free, because the thing you are paying for is no longer the damage but the timing. A doubled three-damage spell splits a creature and a face, or clears two blockers in a single turn, converting a stalled or favorable board into immediate tempo. The cost is structural rather than mana: you need two untapped red creatures willing to sit out the turn, which means conspire wants a wide, creature-heavy red deck rather than a controlling one, and the spell pulls double duty as a reason to keep bodies home rather than send them in. That tension (do you swing or do you copy?) is the design's real content, and it is why conspire never made the damage rate itself competitive: the cards are priced for the unconspired floor and rewarded only at the ceiling, leaving the player to decide each turn which one they are actually paying for.