Blood Curdle

Overpriced removal that pays you back in evasion. Four mana to destroy a creature at instant speed is a hard sell in a color that has spent its whole history driving that rate toward two: this is the tax you pay for the counter tucked into the second sentence. The menace counter is not a throwaway; it permanently changes how one of your creatures fights, and it does so on a permanent rather than a spell, which means it survives the exchange. Kill their blocker, then make one of your bodies genuinely difficult to block for the rest of the game. The design tension is straightforward: the spell wants you to already have a board worth improving, so it plays worst when you are behind (the moment you most want cheap removal) and best when you are ahead and looking to close. That inversion is what keeps it out of the tempo decks that would otherwise snap up any unconditional kill spell, and pushes it toward grindy black midrange where the removal and the evasion are two payments toward the same plan: trade off the ground, then push a threat through the wreckage. Counters that hand out keywords were a recurring idea in this era's design, and this is that idea welded onto removal, buying two effects on one card at the honest cost of paying full retail for each.