Curious. Vanquish for cheaper, at common, and in red? The first two I could sortof see (Smite and Rebuke are fine at common). But red doesn't get much "destroy target creature" these days (except, weirdly, for creature with defender as on Ogre Gatecrasher, presumably because of the grandfathered Goblin Digging Team effect). The only red "destroy creature" effects in Modern are defenders, artifact creatures, Obliterate, and a Planar Chaos card.

So am I the only person who thought Vanquish felt off-color? Smite and Rebuke make sense to me for white, which tends to have defensive removal, but to me killing off defending creatures seems much more at home in a (flavor-wise) aggressive color like red.

The other consideration was that in this block red has very few answers for creatures with high toughness, even more so than normal; and this is especially problematic because there are so many in the format (both large Nightmares and white/blue defensive creatures). Notably, Ignite from Within (which is the main Zaberoth removal spell) can't deal with the T>P guys either. So, this card.

Given how little precedent there is for destroying blocking creatures (four cards?), I guess this is my own little push for the ability going to red.

Make it "Deal a tonne of damage to target blocking creature" and you've got a deal.