Torch Song

The patience tax made into a removal spell. Most burn pays its damage up front; this one demands you park it and wait, ticking up a verse counter each of your upkeeps and accepting that every turn it lingers in play is a turn it could be enchantment-removal bait, a turn the opponent gets to see it coming, a turn it does nothing at all. The design discipline is the slow build: there is no floor here, no minimum guaranteed two or three damage, only a threat that compounds while it charges. Sacrifice it the turn after you cast it and you have spent six total mana for a single point; let it accrue across six or seven upkeeps and it becomes a one-card finisher that can go to the dome. The sacrifice clause is the honesty in the rate, because the payoff fires exactly once and telegraphs itself the entire time it is building. This is closer in spirit to the slow engine cards of its era than to any efficient red spell: a wager that the game goes long and that your opponent cannot answer an enchantment before it matures. The flexible targeting (any target, creature or player) means the card is never wholly dead, but it poses a question most red decks never want to answer honestly: are you willing to commit a permanent to doing nothing now for everything later?