Is it a bit too "cute" to have a red-black burn spell that's halfway between red ("Deal N damage") and black ("Deal N damage, gain N life")?

You could alternatively view this as Shock + Vicious Hunger, or more worryingly Shock + Douse in Gloom.

Alternative possible text box: "~ deals 2 damage to target creature and 2 damage to target player. You gain 2 life." Then it's a semi-lifelinked Lunge. Much less good than this version though.

LOL. I like the idea. I can't really see the life drain aspect when the numbers match up (so some combination of three 2s might work better, but I'm not sure), but I don't know if that's a problem or not. On the one hand, life drain should look like life drain. On the other hand, creating cute exceptions is one thing multicolored commons is good for.

Adding this as the common noncreature spell for the moment. But it was pretty tentative / experimental / stab-in-the-dark; I'm very much up for changing it to one of the other options discussed above or in other ways, as people thing.

It makes sense that R/B is removal. How about a +X/-X effect like Auger Spree? That always feels quintessentially R/B to me.

I tried to think of a way to make red burn + black lifedrain feel right, because I think that's a nice idea, but I couldn't find anything that made sense and didn't like it should have white in instead.

Mmm. Once we invoke +X/-X, the gain 2 life doesn't make sense anymore. I kind of like this one as is. It tells a cute story. The name will have to change, though, since it doesn't add to the story, nor is this a spell that specifically deals with non-flying creatures...

I'm sorry, I meant, "I think this was a nice idea but I'm not sure it's working, how about removing ALL of the card, and replace it, in it's entirety, with Auger Spree, or an Auger Spree variant?" I didn't mean to suggest keeping the life gain and losing everything else.

What's the problem with the name? It seems fine to me to have it be Aer-themed, whether or not it mechanically operates only on non-Aer.

It wouldn't really a problem is this was just a Lightning Blast. It's just the rules text scream 'flavor', and the name doesn't back it up. Well, not without some flavor text that ties it all together.

Anyhow, that's not the conversation here. I'm passing the mic. Anyone else want in on this?

I think the flavour is "this is the kind of oppression the Aer impose on whoever they like", and flavour text could help spell that out; I don't think the mechanics need to explicitly say "monocolour" or "without flying".