Molten Blast

The split on offer is red's classic flexible hedge: one mode is a small burn spell that clears an early creature or chips a planeswalker, the other is unconditional artifact removal. Neither half is spectacular in isolation, and that is the point. Modal removal like this exists so that a card you would otherwise hold back against artifact decks stays live, because the damage mode keeps it from being dead against creature decks. The design lineage runs through cards where red has long paid a small premium to fold two answers into one instant. Two damage is a deliberately modest ceiling; it trades with the early game and threatens a walker's loyalty, but it will not answer much late. What the card actually buys is flexibility at instant speed: hold it open, let the board tell you which mode matters, and rarely waste the draw. Note also what the damage mode cannot do: it will not point at a player, so this is never the card that closes a game, only the one that keeps the game manageable until something else does. That is a quieter kind of value than raw efficiency, and it explains why cards built on this template tend to be role-players rather than staples. They are the answer you reach for when you do not yet know the question.