Smoldering Tar

Removal spell wearing an enchantment's clothes: the four damage that kills a creature is locked behind a sacrifice that only fires at sorcery speed, so it cannot ambush anything in combat the way a real instant would. You commit four mana to a permanent first, then cash it in later when the board asks. The tax for waiting is that every one of your upkeeps someone loses a life, and the targeting is open: you point the drain at an opponent while you sit on the removal, converting dead time into incremental damage. That is the closest a piece of removal from this era gets to running as a value engine. The multicolor designs of the period leaned hard on cards that did two jobs at once, and this is the Rakdos take on the idea: a slow clock you can convert into a single removal spell exactly when you need it. The trade is the immediacy of burn for permanence plus a built-in drain, which is a liability in any deck that wants to interact at flash speed and an asset in one happy to grind. It reads better in an attrition shell than as a tempo play, precisely because the value only accrues if you can afford to leave it parked on the table for several turns.