Skulduggery

A single mana buys a swing of two full points in one combat step, split across two independent targets: your creature climbs, theirs sinks. The trick is that both halves are mandatory to cast. Because the spell reads "target creature you control" and "target creature an opponent controls," you need a legal creature on each side of the board or the spell has no legal targets and simply cannot be cast. That constraint is what pins it to a particular kind of deck: one already committed to the board, developing creatures rather than holding up open mana. When those conditions are met, the payoff is clean. Block their 2/2 with a 1/1, fire this at instant speed, and the math inverts: your blocker survives as a 2/2, their attacker dies as a 1/1, one card doing the work of a pump spell and a removal spell stacked together. The separate targeting lets you point the two effects wherever they matter most, splitting them across a wider combat or stacking both onto a single exchange to guarantee a kill while keeping your creature alive. The -1/-1 half also quietly answers the whole class of X/1 utility creatures on its own, so even in a lopsided combat it earns its slot. This is an efficient double-duty combat trick built for a proactive creature deck, and it rewards patience: the full value only arrives when you hold it for the combat step where both clauses land at once.