Wizard's Lightning

A binary discount runs the whole show. Pay for it in advance with a Wizard already on the board and the reduction collapses this into a one-mana, three-damage instant, dropping it into the same footprint as the most efficient burn in the game. Skip that setup and you are casting an overpriced three-mana spell for an effect that does not warrant it. There is no middle setting: the reduction reads a creature type on cast, not a converted-mana threshold or a graveyard tally, so the card asks a deck to commit to a tribal core up front rather than rewarding any generic curve. Wizard's Retort does the same trick on the counterspell axis, tying its own discount to the same board state, which lets a Wizards shell hold up removal and permission at once from a shared prerequisite. Instant timing is what makes the cheap version dangerous: because the discount checks when you cast, a resolved Wizard turns this into reach and interaction you can float until the exact tempo window you want, all in one card. The gate is doing precise structural work. Untie it from the Wizard requirement and you are left with a strictly better burn spell than any format should tolerate; the creature-type tax is the only thing standing between a one-mana three-damage instant and something unconditional.