Runic Shot

Unconditional destruction for a single white mana would rewrite what removal costs, so the design pays for the cheap rate by pinning the target to tapped status: the spell only touches creatures that committed to the swing, tapped for a mana ability, or got yanked down by an outside effect. That restriction hands the opponent a real say in whether the spell ever connects, which is exactly why one mana reads as fair rather than broken. Keying removal off tapped status is old white technology, but wrapping it in a one-mana rate with an optional kicker gives it a cleaner shape than most. Left alone, it is the cheapest possible answer to an attacker that overcommitted. Splash the blue kicker and the scry 2 smooths your next draws, which is the quiet argument for building it into a two-color shell rather than mono-white: the card wants the second color not for raw power but for a mid-game floor, converting a routine kill into card selection. The friction is real. A creature with vigilance never taps to attack; a patient opponent can simply decline to swing; and the sorcery-speed timing means you cannot fire it on the opposing turn when a tapped attacker sits in front of you. You always need a legal tapped target to cast it at all: the kicker buys the scry, but it cannot manufacture a spell out of an empty board.