Sonic Burst

Four damage at instant speed for two mana is a rate no fair burn spell gets to print straight, and the discard-at-random clause is the price the design pays for it. The randomness is the whole point: a chosen discard would let you pitch your worst card and treat the cost as nearly free, so the spell forces you to surrender something live. You are not spending a card you wanted gone; you are spending a card you do not get to pick, which turns every cast into a small gamble against your own hand. That friction is the balancing mechanism. The closer your hand is to empty, the more it hurts, which means the spell is at its best with cards to spare and at its most punishing when the random pitch might be your only out. It reads as a damage spell with a downside, but the structure is closer to a wager: you buy an extra point of reach past the era's gold-standard three damage for two mana by accepting that the deck, not you, chooses what leaves your hand. Cards that ask you to discard at random as a casting cost form a small and deliberately uncomfortable family, and this one expresses the idea about as cleanly as it gets: a rate too good to print clean, paid for by a cost you cannot optimize away.