Deathforge Shaman

Multikicker turns this into a mana sink with a knob, and the math on the knob is what makes it strange: each extra red pays for two damage, so the spell scales as a linear burn engine that also leaves a 4/3 behind. Five mana for a 4/3 and zero damage is a non-starter, but the curve bends fast: nine mana lands the body and eight to the face, and there is no theoretical ceiling beyond your available red. The design problem it answers is the late-game flood, the point where extra lands do nothing for most creatures; this one keeps converting them into a clock. The damage is locked to a player or planeswalker, never creatures, so it is not a board-control tool and never pretends to be: it exists to close, not to interact. That restriction is what keeps an uncapped reach effect from doubling as removal. The body deserves a note too, because the burn arrives as an enters trigger and not as a spell you spend and discard, which means the creature survives the resolution to attack into whatever life total you just dropped. It is a clumsy thing to cast on curve and a brutal one to cast with a fistful of untapped Mountains, which is exactly the trade multikicker was built to offer: a flat, boring rate at the bottom and an open-ended threat at the top.