Chainflinger

A pinger that gets a raise. Repeatable damage machine guns have always been red's answer to small bodies and X/1 utility creatures, and this one starts as a slow, expensive version of that archetype: paying two mana each tick to plink for one is hardly a bargain. The graveyard clause is what reframes it. Once threshold turns on, the same creature picks up a second mode that doubles the output to two damage for one more mana, enough to put down the X/2s the base ability politely declines and to soften larger targets before a second shot finishes them. That escalation is the entire pitch: a card whose ceiling is gated behind your graveyard filling up, the resource that the era's self-mill and flashback decks were already piling up. It rewards a deck churning through its library rather than asking you to warp around it. The 2/2 body is incidental; nobody is keeping this back to block. What makes the upgrade clean is that it is not a different card, just a better rate on the one you already have, paid for with a condition you were meeting anyway. And because the ability carries a tap symbol rather than a sorcery clause, it operates at instant speed: this is a creature you leave untapped to fire on the opponent's end step, or after blocks are declared, picking off a freshly attacking X/1 before it ever connects.