Shinen of Fury's Fire

Channel made a small set of unassuming Spirits do double duty: each can be discarded for a single mana to fire off a spell-like effect, so a creature you might never cast still has a use the turn you draw it. This is the haste-granting node of that cycle, and haste is the effect that reads as marginal until the exact moment it isn't. The body it sheds is incidental; what matters is the line it carries. A topdecked finisher can swing the turn you find it, a freshly cast threat skips its summoning-sickness tax, and the price is one red mana plus a card you may not have wanted to commit to the board anyway. The tension lives in the choice the card forces every time it shows up: a 2/1 with haste is a fine, forgettable attacker, but the discard line spends the whole permanent to push someone else's damage through immediately. That trade (a body for an instant-speed tempo burst) is the appeal, because haste matters most on the turn you couldn't have planned for it. Channel turned a handful of otherwise unremarkable creatures into flexible spells with a real floor and a timing-dependent ceiling, and this is the one that sells speed.