Stormscape Battlemage

The Esper of its cycle: a blue Wizard whose two kickers reach into white and black, the colors that flank blue on the wheel. Each Battlemage in this allied-color cycle is a 2/2 body until you pay one of its kickers, and this one carries the most aggressive pair of the five. The white kicker buys a small life buffer; the black kicker is the one that matters, a hard kill on any nonblack creature that also denies regeneration, all stapled to a body that stays on the board after the spell resolves. Pay both and a single card becomes a removal spell, a lifegain trigger, and a 2/2 at once. The design idea is the cycle's whole conceit: a card that scales with how many colors you can support, punishing the mono-color deck and rewarding the three-color manabase that can muster blue plus white plus black. The "can't be regenerated" clause on the black kicker is the tell that this came from an era when regeneration was a live concern, when fatties routinely shrugged off ordinary removal. The tension that keeps it honest is the tax: the full payoff costs an additional on top of the base , so the all-modes line is a commitment of seven mana and three colors, not a tempo play. It is removal that arrives with a clock attached, for the player willing to build the mana to ask for everything.