Disenchant

Two mana at instant speed to destroy either an artifact or an enchantment was the rate Alpha set as the baseline, and three decades of white removal have been built by negotiating with this template rather than replacing it. Naturalize widened the access by handing the same shape to green; Return to Dust spent two extra mana to buy exile and a second target; Revoke Existence asked for sorcery speed in exchange for exile; Fragmentize narrowed to permanents of mana value three or less for a discount. Each variant adjusts one term of the same equation. What keeps the card at two mana is the breadth of the target line paired with the absence of any other clause: no exile, no cantrip, no upside, no condition. That austerity is what holds the cost down, and it makes Disenchant a teaching example of how Magic prices flexibility: the broader the answer, the more spare everything around it has to be. When a format wants a clean answer to a Howling Mine or a Pacifism, this is the shape it reaches for, and the variants are remembered by what they add or subtract from this baseline rather than as designs in their own right.