Celestial Flare
The deal here is that the target player, not the spell, picks which creature dies. That single clause moves this away from targeted removal and into the family of edict effects, where the answer reaches a creature you could never legally target: a hexproof attacker, a shrouded blocker, a general protected by a thicket of redundant bodies. The catch is the same one that constrains every edict: against a player with two creatures committed to combat, you are paying double white for whichever one they value least. The combat-only restriction sharpens both ends of that bargain. You cannot fire it preemptively at a board that is sitting back; you have to wait for the creature to commit to an attack or a block, and crucially, the sacrifice can only fall on a creature already in combat. That makes the card strongest exactly when an opponent goes all-in with a single threat: the chaff they kept home is not a legal choice, so the lone bomb has nowhere to hide. It is weakest when the opponent commits a wide attack and can shrug off losing their least valuable swinger. Edicts in white are themselves a small lineage, since the color rarely gets to make an opponent sacrifice; this one earns the effect by tying it to the combat step, where white already wants to be making decisions.



