Red Sun's Twilight

Scalable artifact removal is old news; the twist here is what happens once you overpay. Below five, this is a straightforward X-spell that shatters as many artifacts as you can pay for, priced to answer one clock or the whole board depending on the mana you have. The design lives at the X-of-five threshold, where destruction flips into theft: every artifact you break comes back as a hasty copy under your control until the end step. That single clause changes the axis the card sits on. At low X it is a defensive answer, a way to keep pace with an artifact deck. At high X it is a swing button, converting an opponent's mana rocks, equipment, vehicles, and artifact creatures into a one-turn army pointed the other way before the copies vanish. The end-step exile keeps the reversal from turning permanent: you get the attack, the tap-abilities, the immediate value, but not a growing board, so the effect stays a burst rather than an engine. What makes the split-mode ceiling interesting is that both halves want completely different game states. The removal half rewards you for casting it early and cheap; the copy half rewards you for hoarding mana and firing it into a fully developed opposing board. Few X-spells ask you to hold for a payoff that only materializes when the opponent has committed the most, and this one is built entirely around that asymmetry.