Scorching Lava

Two damage at instant speed for two mana is plain rate, the kind of efficient burn that has existed in every era; the kicker is what regeneration-and-recursion decks fear. Pay the extra red and the spell stops being a tempo trade and becomes a permanent answer: the creature can't regenerate, and if anything would put it in the graveyard this turn, it gets exiled instead. That conditional exile clause is the quiet upgrade. Plenty of burn could push a regenerator through its shield if you paid up; far fewer could strip a recursion-based threat of its second life. Against the regenerating beaters and graveyard engines of fair black-and-green decks, the kicked mode answered both problems with one card. The structure flexes by design: cheap enough to fire early as raw burn, scalable enough to function as targeted exile once the extra red costs you nothing. Note the rider is conditional ("if it would die this turn"), so it isn't a clean banishment like a dedicated exile spell; it's a replacement effect bolted onto a burn spell, and the distinction is what the kicker is buying. Exiling a creature in place of death keeps it out of the graveyard entirely, which means no death triggers fire and no recursion has fuel to work with, all while the unkicked mode keeps the card live in an opening hand where three mana would be too steep to ask.