Bereavement

Color hosers from this era split into two schools: the broad tax that bled a whole strategy, and the surgical answer aimed at a single mechanic. This belongs firmly to the first camp, a permanent that converts every green creature's death into a discard penalty on its controller. The design logic is punitive rather than preventive: it never stops green from playing creatures, it makes the green deck pay each time one of them trades, chump-blocks, or eats removal. Against a board of disposable bodies (the go-wide, expendable creature plan green has always leaned on), the discards compound, and the green player ends up choosing between holding creatures back and emptying their own hand. What pays for the effect is its sheer narrowness: it does nothing against four other colors, and against a green deck light on creatures it sits as a blank that cost two mana to deploy. That was the era's bargain for cheap, repeatable color hate, the same school of two-mana mono-color enchantments that asked you to read your opponent before committing a card to it. Guess right and a permanent quietly unravels half their plan; guess wrong and the slot rots in play, taxing nothing.