Bleed Dry

A minus-thirteen swing is functional overkill for almost anything you will ever point it at, and that excess is the design telling you the number is not really about the math. Because a creature reduced below zero toughness dies to state-based action rather than destruction, this reads as removal that ignores indestructible and regeneration alike: it never says "destroy," so no destruction-based defense applies. What it cannot do is chase a creature it is not allowed to touch, because it still targets. Protection from black or from instants keeps the shrink off entirely, and hexproof or shroud walls it out the same way. The stat reduction is only the first half, though; the exile rider is where the card earns its double-black cost. Black removal has drifted away from clean destruction precisely because so much of the game's payoff now lives in the graveyard: recursion, delve, escape, reanimation targets that actively want to hit the yard. A shrink-to-death effect that also exiles slams that door, denying the death trigger and stripping the body out of any yard-based engine before it can loop back. The four mana value and the demanding double-black are the tax for that thoroughness: this is the deliberate, expensive answer rather than a cheap tempo swing. What it surrenders beyond the targeting requirement is reach; only a creature is ever in its line of fire, so planeswalkers, enchantments, and an empty board sit outside it. Within its lane, built for an era where killing a threat stopped being enough, it removes rather than merely destroys.