Destructive Tampering
Modal cards live or die on whether both halves justify the same slot, and this one stitches together two effects that almost never want to be in the same deck. The first mode is artifact removal at a fair red rate: a clean answer that does the job without conditions. The second is a Falter effect, the old red staple that strips blockers from anything earthbound to force a lethal alpha strike. The bet is that those two readings rarely overlap in a single matchup, so a card that would otherwise rot in hand against the wrong opponent always has a live half. Against an artifact deck you point it at their best permanent; against a board that's trying to gum up the ground, you flip it into a finisher and swing for the kill. The friction is that neither half is the best version of itself. There are cheaper artifact answers and cheaper Falters, and paying for the flexibility means you're a beat slower than a dedicated card on either axis. That's the recurring tax on charge-counter-free modality: you buy insurance against dead cards, and the premium is rate. Where it earns its keep is in a deck that genuinely wants both jobs done and would rather run one flexible card than split two narrow ones across the maindeck.
