Meltdown

Set X to two and you erase Signets, Talismans, and the cheap rocks that fuel an artifact ramp engine while the expensive payoff survives; set it to six and the whole board goes with it. That dial is the entire pitch. A fixed-cost sweeper like Shatterstorm pays one rate for one situation, but here you buy the slice of the board you choose this turn, and the floor (X=0) sweeps zero-cost mana rocks and Moxen for a single red mana. The cleverness is in what the scaling does not charge for: a single X investment destroys every artifact at or below that mana value, regardless of how many are out, so a board crowded with cheap permanents collapses for the same outlay it takes to clear one. The leash sits at the top end instead. Each point of mana value on a key artifact raises the X you must reach before it dies, so the costliest linchpin is what forces you to commit real mana, while everything beneath it falls along the way. Sorcery speed shapes the play too: there is no holding it up as a trap, no waiting for an opponent to overextend, so it rewards a clean read on what the artifact deck is assembling rather than reactive patience. This is the template for cost-scaled artifact removal, the answer red reaches for when the problem is "too many small artifacts" rather than "one big one," and X-as-mana-value-cap removal has recurred across the colors since.