Acidic Dagger

Deathtouch reverse-engineered out of mid-90s combat math, with every clause written to keep it honest. Conferring "destroy what you damage" on a creature is the same move deathtouch makes, and the natural line is the same: point it at your own attacker, swing, and any blocker that trades into it dies regardless of how big it was. What separates the Dagger from a clean keyword is the friction wrapped around the effect. The activation cost is steep, and the timing window is fixed: you commit before blockers are declared, betting on a combat outcome you cannot yet see rather than reacting to one. The sacrifice clause is subtler than it looks. It is a delayed trigger that only exists once the ability resolves, so an opponent who removes the targeted creature in response to the activation makes the ability fizzle for lack of a legal target; no trigger is ever set up, and the Dagger stays on the battlefield. The artifact falls away only when the conscripted creature leaves play after resolution, typically by dying in the very combat it was sent into. The Wall exclusion is period flavor rather than a balance lever, a carve-out sparing Walls from the effect. The result reads like a puzzle box: a colorless artifact handing out a thing black usually pays a card for, fenced so heavily that it asks you to engineer the combat step in advance. Pure Mirage-era design, a powerful primitive handed over with the angle left for you to find.