Explosive Entry

Artifact removal has always been the easiest effect to over-cost, because the cards that need to answer artifacts are also the cards nobody wants clogging a maindeck when the opponent brings none. This one solves the dead-card problem by bolting a growth effect onto the removal: if there is no artifact worth destroying, the counter still lands, and if there is nothing to grow, the artifact still dies. Both halves say "up to one target," so you can aim each effect wherever it does the most good; in most board states it does at least one of the two jobs it was built for, and in the right board state it does both for the price of a single card. That is the whole design tension a flexible removal spell has to resolve: how do you make an answer that stays live when the thing it answers is absent? The counter is the insurance policy, turning a reactive spell into a proactive one at sorcery speed. Red has printed plenty of split-purpose cards that pair a utility effect with a body-pump, but most of those force a choice between the two modes. This one asks for nothing: point the destroy at whatever artifact is there, drop the counter on whatever creature wants it, and take the entire board state in one card.