The First Eruption

A sweeper paid out in installments, which is the whole design idea behind framing a board-wipe as a Saga. The first chapter clips most of the board for one, the second chapter rebates a chunk of the mana you spent, and the third demands a Mountain on the way out and detonates for three to everything. That delay is the cost: where a conventional red sweeper resolves all at once and rewards you for casting it at the right moment, this one announces its full payload two turns early and asks the table to play around a clock everyone can read. The structure favors a deck already ahead of the curve, one whose creatures fly or outsize the damage tiers while the opponent's board does not. The sacrifice-a-Mountain clause on the final chapter is the most distinctive wrinkle: it converts a land into the trigger for a larger effect, and it can simply fail to fire if you have no Mountain left, leaving the bigger sweep stranded. As a Saga, it also sits on the battlefield as an enchantment between chapters, exposed to disenchant effects in a window most burn-based wipes never offer. The appeal is in the staging rather than the rate: three separate effects out of one card, metered to the turn, each chapter cheap on its own but only worth the slot if the deck is built to survive its own first chapter and capitalize on the last.