Cast into the Fire

The whole value of a modal spell like this lives in the second mode never being dead weight. Split cards and modal instants that pair a broadly useful effect with a hoser have been a design staple for years: the trick is pricing both halves so the artifact-exile mode costs you nothing to keep in the deck when the first mode is what wins games. Here the damage mode is the reliable one, a two-point spread across up to two attackers or blockers that mops up small creatures and go-wide starts. The artifact-exile mode is the answer you pack alongside it: exile rather than destroy, so it slips past regeneration and indestructibility and leaves nothing to recur. What makes the packaging efficient is that neither mode changes the cost or the timing; it is the same two-mana instant whether you point it at bodies or at an equipment, a mana rock, or a problem artifact. That flexibility is the entire pitch. A dedicated two-damage instant or a dedicated artifact-hoser would each be narrower and each risk sitting in hand at the wrong moment; folding both into one card means the slot always has a job.