Nova Pentacle

Redirection as a colorless artifact effect, sold at a deliberately steep rate: four mana to cast, three more and a tap to activate. The clause that defines the card is who picks the new target. Most damage-redirection effects in the game's history let the controller choose, turning a defensive tool into a removal spell; here the redirected damage goes to a creature of the opponent's choice. In practice that means the opponent steers it onto one of your own creatures whenever you have a body worth burning, so the effect rarely behaves like a clean shield and almost never like a two-for-one. The activation window still matters: you announce the redirection before the damage is dealt, so it works as a pre-emptive measure against a telegraphed threat (a big attacker, a known burn spell, a ping engine) rather than a reactive save. The seven-mana total cost across two turns reads as punishing by modern standards, but it reflects an era when redirection was treated as a powerful enough effect to gate behind real investment, and when artifacts that protected the player rather than generating value or dealing damage were priced as luxury goods. A curio of the early colorless toolbox: the shape of the deal is unusual (you pay the mana, they pick the landing spot), and that opponent-controlled choice is exactly what keeps the card from ever quite doing what its controller wants.