Lash of Thorns

Deathtouch turns any pump spell into a removal spell, and this one is priced so the black mage barely notices the tax. For a single mana at instant speed, a chump blocker becomes a killer: the deathtouch clause means it only has to connect for one damage to trade up, so the +2/+1 is almost incidental to the plan. Any creature you point this at now murders whatever it fights, and the extra power just widens the gap on the crackback. That is the quiet efficiency of stapling deathtouch to a combat trick: it collapses the usual either-or of a pump spell (survive the block, or push the damage) into a proposition where the opponent loses a creature no matter how they engage. Cheap black instants that weaponize combat math rather than dealing damage outright are an old idea, and this is a lean take on it, close in spirit to earlier deathtouch-granting tricks but trimmed to the bone. It rewards a defensive posture as readily as an aggressive one, since a lone blocker armed with this answers an attacker several times its size. The ceiling is modest and the effect is narrow to creature combat, but the floor is a one-mana removal spell disguised as a pump, and that disguise is the whole appeal.