Chandra's Pyreling
Red usually treats its noncombat damage as the last word: the burn spell to the face is how the game ends, not how it begins. This 1/3 flips the roles, turning that ping into a trigger and asking the creature to close instead. The soft body is intentional, held back on offense until you feed it, because the whole reward hinges on a source (any source, including the Pyreling's own would-be enablers) connecting noncombat damage to an opponent. Land one and you have a double-striking attacker; chain multiple burn spells or repeatable pings across a turn and each one stacks another +1/+0 under the double strike, so the power climbs linearly while the actual damage compounds. That interaction with recurring damage engines is where a two-drop turns into a kill. Because the trigger keys off the damage itself and not the cast, the timing of your burn relative to combat is the whole decision the card poses: throw the Shock before the attack step, not after, and the swing arrives multiplied. It wants a spell-dense red shell that was already pointing reach at the opponent's face and just needed a body willing to convert incidental damage into a lethal turn.


