Master the Way

The trick that keeps this from being a Lava Spike with cantrip stapled on is sequencing: it draws first, so the card you draw counts toward the damage. Fire it on an empty hand and you still throw at least one point; fire it with a stocked grip and the number climbs with every card you held back. That ordering rewards exactly the wrong instinct for most burn. A removal spell wants you to spend; this one wants you to hoard, converting a full hand into a five-mana finisher pointed at a face or a fattie. The cost is the cost: at five mana sorcery-speed, you are paying a premium for the flexibility of any-target damage plus a card, and the payoff only scales if your deck is built to sit on cards rather than dump them. It belongs to the family of hand-size-as-damage effects, the same conversion that gives Banefire its reach or lets a loaded grip turn into a kill in spell-heavy decks, but with the cantrip baked in so the spell never costs you a card on net. The result is a removal-burn hybrid that doubles as a finisher in any blue-red shell willing to play the long game, where the deciding turn is less about drawing the right answer and more about how many answers you already kept.