Avengers: Under Siege

The whole three-chapter arc turns on a creature-type gate. Chapter I puts two 2/1 menace bodies on the board, and those bodies happen to be Villains, which is the entire point of what follows. Chapter II deals two damage to each non-Villain creature and each opponent, and because your fresh tokens are Villains, the sweep parts around exactly the creatures the Saga just handed you. That is not the same as a clean one-way wrath: any of your own non-Villains still take the two, and opposing Villains walk through it untouched, so the asymmetry is only as good as the board you have actually built. What survives is your Villain count, and Chapter III turns that number into ramp, minting a Treasure for each Villain you control rather than asking you to sacrifice anything. Read forward, it is a compressed tempo curve: deploy, clear the blockers your menace bodies can now punch past, refuel on mana. Read as removal, the middle chapter alone is a symmetrical two-point sweep wearing a type-based exemption. The design tension is patience against inevitability. Saga counters advance on their own, so the sweep is coming no matter what, but it arrives on a fixed schedule you cannot accelerate, which means an opponent tracking the clock knows the precise turn the board resets and can hold back accordingly. The Villain type is the switch that decides who lives through the middle chapter and the multiplier that sizes the payoff at the end.