Chain Lightning

Burn-as-pyramid-scheme: the spell hands the next decision to your opponent, and the trap is that the cheapest answer (eat the three) is often the wrong one, because the copy is sitting there at two mana with a fresh target waiting. The design is a closed economy. Each link costs the controller of the previous target two red mana to forward, so the spell self-balances against a mono-red mirror (where everyone can pay) and runs wild against decks that simply cannot produce on the relevant turn. Notice what the template does not do: it never copies for free, never escalates the damage, never changes the three. The variance lives entirely in targeting and in who has open red mana, a decision tree later red cards (Fiery Confluence, the various storm-era rituals-plus-burn lines) would lean on more explicitly. Reprinted sparingly across the decades because the rate is genuinely loud at one mana, and because the copy clause invites politics in multiplayer that Wizards has been cautious about repeating. The card reads like a Legends-era thought experiment about whether a one-mana three-damage spell could be printed if you gave the table a way to redirect it, and the answer turned out to be yes, as long as the redirect costs more than the original.