Searing Spear

Lightning Bolt with the discount stripped out: same three damage, same any-target flexibility, but priced at two mana instead of one. That gap looks small on paper and is everything in practice, because the entire value of cheap red removal is the tempo it buys, and one extra mana per cast changes which turns you can hold up a kill and still develop your board. This is the rate red gets when Wizards decides Bolt itself is too good for a given power level: the flexible "any target" clause stays intact (it can go to the face, to a planeswalker, or to a creature), so the spell keeps all of Bolt's reach while paying for it in the place that matters least to a control deck and most to an aggressive one. The lineage runs through a string of two-mana, three-damage instants that share this exact compromise (Incinerate, Lightning Strike, Skullcrack-adjacent burn), each a deliberate half-step down from the gold standard. None of them is exciting on its own; that is the point. Searing Spear exists to give a format a clean, no-rider burn spell without handing it the most efficient one ever printed, and it does that job with no clause to remember and nothing to play around.