Heat Shimmer
A clone spell rewritten for the sorcery turn. Most copy effects of its era ask you to pay for a permanent and keep it; this one prices the copy as a one-turn rental instead. The haste-and-exile package collapses the value proposition to a single attack step: you make the copy, swing, and lose it at the end step, which means the spell is buying combat math and enters-the-battlefield triggers rather than a board presence. That shifts the entire calculus toward what the target does on arrival rather than what it is worth left in play. Copy a creature whose damage on entry or attack matters more than its long-term body, and the temporary nature stops being a downside; it becomes the reason the rate works at all. The token also reads any creature on the battlefield, not just your own, so a defensive use exists: borrow the strongest thing across the table for one swing. What gates the spell is dependency: it needs a worthwhile target already in play before it does anything, and at sorcery speed it cannot ambush blockers or answer a threat on the opponent's turn. Within that window it is a clean expression of the design idea: power untethered from permanence, paid for not in mana but in time.



