Coming In Hot

First strike on an attacker is the oldest trick in red's book: it lets a modest creature win a block it would otherwise trade into, and the +1/+0 pushes the same damage math in your favor. The line of one-mana red tricks doing exactly this runs long. The rider on the back end is what changes the calculus: if the spell resolves, you scry regardless of whether the combat step ever plays out the way you hoped. Point it at an attacker, watch the opponent decline to block, and you have still filtered a dead land off the top or dug toward the card you need. That is the design logic paying for the trick's biggest weakness, the moment the opponent simply refuses the bait and your pump does nothing: the card refunds a fraction of its cost as card selection so a "wasted" cast still moves you forward. The instant-speed window is where it earns its keep. Held up in an attack step, it turns a bluff into a threat, and whichever way the opponent reads the situation, you come out with the scry. The one line it cannot cross is a target that dies in response: remove the creature and the spell fizzles with no legal target, no pump, and no scry, which is the same risk any single-target trick carries.