Assassin's Strike
Six mana buys unconditional creature destruction, a rate that has to justify itself somehow, and the discard rider is the justification: a removal spell that also peels a card from the controller's grip. The two halves pull against each other on the curve, though. Black has always carried cheaper kill (Doom Blade, Murder, a long line of two-mana spot removal), and it has always carried dedicated discard (Mind Rot does the second half for half the cost). Bolted together, they make a card overcosted for either job alone, worth the price only when you genuinely want both at once, against an opponent rebuilding from an already-short hand. That window is narrow enough that the spell reads more as a flavor-forward two-for-one than an efficient one: the assassin kills the mark, and the victim drops whatever they were clutching. This fills a slot in a constructed-set common: clean reach for a slower black deck that wants its removal to do a little extra, not a benchmark anything else gets measured against. The rate is the whole story, and the rate is what works against it.


