Mortal Wound

Green's answer to the question it has always struggled with: how do you kill something without a removal spell? The mechanism is a deathtouch deferral. Rather than dealing damage itself, this aura converts any future damage into destruction, so a single point of combat or burn finishes the enchanted creature off. That makes it strongest as a pre-combat trap: hang it on a blocker or attacker and the creature dies the instant it takes a hit, no matter how small the source. The damage still has to come from somewhere, which is the design discipline. The aura does nothing on its own; it is a setup card waiting for damage to arrive, whether from your own chump-attack, a pinger, a stray burn spell, or combat math you force the opponent into. You commit a card and a turn ahead of the payoff, betting that the marked creature will see damage before the opponent can sacrifice it, bounce it, or simply leave it home. The lineage of cheap green auras that simulate removal through deathtouch-style effects runs through this card; later designs refined the idea into keyworded deathtouch printed directly onto bodies, which carries the threat on a creature rather than asking the pilot to pre-commit an enchantment. The aura version asks something different: it trades the convenience of a self-contained removal spell for the lowest possible mana cost, then leans on you to manufacture the one point of damage it needs.