Scalding Viper // Steam Clean

A punisher pointed at the cheap half of the game. The creature side taxes the low end of the curve specifically: any opponent who casts a spell of mana value 3 or less (a one-drop, a two-drop, an early removal spell, most counterspells) takes a point of damage on the cast itself. Because the trigger fires on the cast and not the resolution, the tax bites even when the spell gets countered, redirected, or fizzles; paying the mana is what hurts, regardless of whether the spell does anything. It ignores the four-drop and everything above it, a hate-bear tuned against decks that live on their opening turns, and the fragile 2/1 body keeps the design honest as a clock rather than a wall. The Adventure front end is what holds the package together. Instead of bolting a static rider onto a red body, Steam Clean gives it a blue prelude: a flexible bounce that can reset your own permanent, buy tempo against a threat, or clear a blocker before the Viper commits. The exile clause splits the card into a two-stage play, taking the interaction now and banking the creature for later. The color pairing is the real wrinkle. Adventure usually keeps both halves inside a single color identity; here the mechanic stitches a red aggressive body to a blue tempo spell, giving a two-color deck a card that reads as its own kind of value in each color it draws on.