Pardic Arsonist

Threshold was an early answer to a design problem: how do you make a graveyard count for something without building an entire engine around it. The mechanic flips a switch once seven cards pile up, and this is the version that bolts a Lightning Bolt onto the body's arrival once that switch is on, three damage to any target, baked into an enters trigger rather than cast as a separate spell. A 3/3 for four mana is below rate on its own; the payoff is that crossing threshold lets the same card come down and remove a blocker, burn a player, or finish a planeswalker in one motion. The tension is all in the timing. Below threshold you have a vanilla beater you would rather not have spent four mana on; above it you have one of the cleaner tempo plays the color offered at the time, because the burn arrives attached to a creature you were going to play anyway. That ties the payoff to a graveyard that fills naturally over the mid-game, which is exactly the gating the mechanic wanted: reward decks that churn through cards rather than hand the effect to anyone who pays four mana on turn four. It reads as a curve-topper for an aggressive red shell willing to dump its hand and trade early, where by the time you draw it the seventh card is already in the bin and the three damage comes free.