Arms of Hadar

A one-sided sweeper that only mows down a single player's board, and the asymmetry does all the work. Where symmetrical -X/-X effects like Infest or Nausea force you to price your own creatures into the math, this one fires into one opponent without touching your own side, which turns it from a reset button into a genuine tempo swing. The -2/-2 band is deliberately calibrated: it clears the small stuff (tokens, mana dorks, the one- and two-toughness aggressive creatures that flood an early board) while leaving anything with real toughness standing. That ceiling is what keeps it from being a strict upgrade to a hard board wipe; it is a scalpel for a go-wide start, not an answer to a fatty. The sorcery speed matters too: you commit to the read on your own turn, so it rewards clearing a blocker before an alpha strike rather than punishing a swing after the fact. It sits in the long tradition of black paying full mana value for effects other colors get cheaper or symmetric, trading efficiency for the privilege of aiming the effect exactly where you want it.