Fleeting Distraction

The -1/-0 is almost a fiction: a single point off a creature's power rarely changes a combat outcome, and against most boards it does nothing measurable at all. That is the point. This belongs to the family of cantrips where the spell on top of the draw is a polite excuse, a token effect bolted to the real product, which is one card for one mana at instant speed. The lineage runs through cards like Brainstorm and Opt and Sleight of Hand, each pricing the cantrip differently: some give you selection, some give you depth, this one gives you a marginal combat nudge you will mostly ignore. What it actually does is keep a deck's card count whole while filtering toward the cards that matter, the function that makes blue's draw-go shells tick. The minor debuff occasionally earns its keep, shrinking an attacker just under a blocker's reach or pushing a creature out of lethal range, provided you cast it during the declare blockers step or earlier, before combat damage is assigned. But the design honesty is in how small the rider is: a cantrip this cheap can only carry a body-light effect, and -1/-0 is about as light as a creature-targeting spell gets while still being technically relevant. It is the cantrip stripped to its frame, the draw paying full freight and the spell text apologizing for the inconvenience of needing a target at all.