Arasta of the Endless Web

A tax on interaction, dressed as a wall. The 3/5 reach body is already a competent stalling piece against fliers, but the payload is the punishment clause: every instant or sorcery an opponent casts hands you a 1/2 reacher, so the more a control or combo deck leans on its spells, the deeper the ground stall it digs itself into. That inversion is the clever part. Cards designed to blank aggression usually sit passive against a spell-heavy opponent; this one turns their game plan into your board. A single removal spell aimed at Arasta itself still nets a token, which means even the answer to the answer pays the toll. The tokens inherit reach too, so the anti-air coverage compounds turn over turn rather than resting on one large body that a single edict or burn spell can undo. The design lineage is the pillow-fort spider recast as a proactive hate-piece: where earlier defensive walls waited to be attacked, this one profits from being cast at, folding a hoser's usual read-and-react posture into a clock that spellslinger decks feed on their own turns. The ceiling scales with the opponent's spell density, which makes it a soft answer that hardens exactly against the decks built to ignore soft answers.