Wrecking Ball
Destroy target creature or land is a deceptively old line of text dressed up in a two-color cost. Land destruction in Magic has nearly always been a sorcery, and unconditional creature kill in black has nearly always carried a "nonblack" or "nonartifact" clause; this fuses both jobs into one instant with no rider at all. The price for that flexibility is the gold cost: four mana, two of it colored across two colors, makes it slower and harder to cast than either a dedicated removal spell or a dedicated Stone Rain. What you buy is choice at instant speed, the ability to hold the same card up against either a finisher that resolves or a mana base that needs pruning, and to decide which problem to solve after your opponent has committed. That is a real wrinkle in a metagame where the relevant threat might be a creature or might be the land that powers one. The tradeoff is that it does neither job efficiently: a player who only wants to kill creatures has cheaper options, and a player who only wants to attack lands has cheaper options. Wrecking Ball exists for the deck that genuinely cannot predict which it will need, and is willing to overpay slightly to keep both answers live in a single slot.




