Elven Lyre

A combat trick wearing the body of an artifact, which is a stranger thing than it sounds. The pump itself is unremarkable: +2/+2 is the going rate for a one-shot buff, and you pay two to play it before you ever spend a mana on the effect. What the artifact framing buys is colorlessness and patience. Any deck can run it regardless of color identity, and it sits on the battlefield as a known threat rather than a card hidden in hand, which inverts the usual bluffing dynamic of a trick: opponents can see the gun on the table and plan around it, but they also have to respect it every time they enter combat for the rest of the game until you fire. The sacrifice clause is what prices the rate: it turns a permanent into ammunition that vanishes once used, so the buff you committed early can only be spent once. The design reflects a moment when Wizards routinely translated keyword-light effects into artifact form to make them universally accessible, before instants and color identity carried the weight they do now. The line between "spell" and "permanent that does a spell's job" was drawn differently then: the same effect a green or red trick would deliver at instant speed, packaged instead as a board object you commit early and detonate later.