Barrin's Spite

The cruelty here is the Hobson's choice it forces on the defender. Most removal lets the opponent keep what they value most; this one targets two creatures the same player controls, then makes them sacrifice one and bounce the other, so they surrender their best threat or watch it crash back into hand to be recast. A control deck holding it answers two creatures with one card while never quite committing to a clean two-for-one: the bounce half is tempo, not a body in the graveyard, which means a recursion deck can replay what comes back. That half-measure is what keeps it fair rather than oppressive. The requirement that both targets share a controller also narrows it sharply: it punishes a player who has overextended a board and does nothing against the lone threat. Named for Barrin, the master mage of Tolaria whose archive and emotional life ran through this era's storyline, it reads as spite in the literal sense, the controlling mind deciding which of an opponent's creations survives and which gets unmade. As Dimir removal it sits between hard kill and pure tempo, doing a little of each and asking the caster to accept they will not get to pick which.