Short Sword

The plainest Equipment in the design vocabulary: one mana to make, one mana to move, and a flat +1/+1 wherever it lands. There is no condition, no creature-type rider, no drawback to weigh, which is precisely the point of it existing. Bonesplitter offers more reach for the same investment, and the various living weapons and tribal swords pile on keywords, so Short Sword sits at the floor of the category: the rate against which a slightly fancier Equipment has to justify its extra text. As repeatable combat math it does honest work, since the buff persists across creatures and survives the death of any one wearer, but it is built as a baseline rather than a payoff. Its real design job is to anchor an Equipment subtheme without demanding a build-around: a cheap artifact to widen a board with a static pump, a thing for an equip-matters trigger to point at, fodder that keeps the curve low when a set wants Equipment as a recurring signal. The equip cost is sorcery-speed and the bonus is unconditional, which is the whole bargain: you pay nothing in flexibility because the card asks nothing in return. This is the common a designer reaches for when a set needs a clean artifact to round out its slot, doing exactly what it says and no more.