Incinerate

The price of paying one more mana than Lightning Bolt: a rider that turns off regeneration on the creature it kills. That single clause is the design logic. In an era when regeneration was the dominant way midrange creatures shrugged off burn and combat, a removal spell that promised the kill regardless of shields was worth the extra mana to a control deck that needed certainty. Bolt could be answered by a regeneration shield held up at the right moment; this could not, at least not on the creature it pointed at. The "any target" clause keeps the reach option open, so the card never stops being able to close a game by going to the face, but its identity is the assassination tool, the burn spell you cast when you have to be sure something dies and stays dead. That role made it a fixture of red-based control and aggro-control shells for years, the reliable answer to whatever the format's best regenerating threat happened to be. As regeneration faded from the design vocabulary and creatures grew larger, three damage with an anti-regeneration clause became a narrower proposition, and faster or more efficient burn took its slots. The premium-for-certainty pattern outlived the card itself, though: every time a designer wants a burn spell that closes a door rather than merely dealing damage, they reach for some version of the bargain Incinerate struck first.