Defiler of Instinct

The Phyrexian Kavu at the head of a five-color cycle of Defilers, each one bending its color's permanent spells around a life-for-mana discount, and red's version turns the discount into a rain of pings. The math is what makes it dangerous: pay 2 life as you cast any red permanent, shave a red pip off the cost, and take a free point of damage aimed anywhere you like. Every red creature, artifact, or enchantment becomes both cheaper and a source of reach, so the card converts a board-building turn into incremental burn without ever asking you to spend a card on it. The trigger fires on the cast, not resolution, which means it lands even if the spell is countered or fizzles, and it can point at a creature to clear a blocker before your discounted threat resolves. The self-inflicted life cost is the honest tax here: the discount is optional, so a low-life board state simply reverts the card to a 4/4 first striker that still throws a dart every time you cast a red permanent. What separates it from ordinary payoff creatures is that the cost reduction and the damage are stapled to the same act, rewarding a deck that floods the board with cheap red permanents rather than one that leans on a single expensive bomb. First strike keeps the body relevant in combat while the engine does the real work off to the side.