Volley of Boulders

Nine mana for six damage you can split however you like is, on its raw rate, indefensible: that is the price of two Lightning Bolts plus a hefty surcharge for the privilege of doing it once. The flashback line is supposed to redeem that math. Six red mana buys the same six damage a second time, so the card's logic runs that you pay an exorbitant front end to bank a second, equally exorbitant back end, with the divided-damage clause letting each cast mop up a board or finish a player rather than commit everything to one target. It is a top-of-the-curve haymaker dressed as a removal spell, the kind of design the graveyard-matters era leaned on to give expensive cards a reason to exist past their first resolution. The trouble is that both costs are sized for a game that has already broken open by the time either can be paid; the second use rarely arrives before the board state has resolved itself. As an artifact of early flashback design it is honest about what the keyword was for, turning one card into two cards over a long game, while standing as a clean demonstration of how punishing the rate gets when the base spell was already overpriced before you ever reached the graveyard.