Arachne, Psionic Weaver

A tax that reads its target. Most cost-increasers ask you to guess where an opponent's threats live; this one lets you look at the hand first, then aim the tax at whatever card type actually matters, be it a sweeper, a planeswalker, a key enchantment, or the removal that would answer your board. The exclusion of creatures is the constraint that keeps it fair: you cannot slow the opposing curve, only their answers and their engine pieces, so the effect rewards a proactive deck that already wants the opponent reacting rather than developing. Note the ability shape, too: the look-then-choose is a static ability that sets up a replacement effect as Arachne enters, so it locks in the taxed type immediately, before anyone can respond. Web-slinging reframes the deployment entirely. Paying by bouncing a tapped creature lets you re-run an enters-the-battlefield effect, return a tapped attacker to hand to reuse it later, or simply drop a body and a tax on the same turn while cashing in a creature that had already done its combat work. The two halves reinforce each other: the alternative cost turns spent board presence back into a cheap deployment, and the entry ability folds hand-reading into a card you already wanted on the battlefield. It is a hatebear built around knowledge rather than a blanket restriction, and the difference is that it never taxes the wrong thing.