Bloodline Culling

The two modes on this instant answer two problems that black removal usually has to solve separately. The first mode, a straightforward -5/-5, is single-target creature kill scaled to eat almost anything short of a genuine haymaker; the second is a battlefield sweep aimed exclusively at creature tokens, wiping a board of spirits, saprolings, zombies, or elves without touching the real threats you might rather leave standing. That asymmetry is the interesting part: token strategies pay a tax that permanent creatures never see, and a deck full of one-power fodder simply evaporates against the second mode while a control mirror shrugs it off entirely. The design cleverness is in the pricing. Both effects want to cost more on their own, but bundling a hard removal spell with a narrow-but-devastating anti-token option lets each cover the other's blind spot: you keep the card live against a swarm you cannot afford to spot-remove, and live against a single fatty you cannot afford to leave alive. The instant speed matters more than the modality suggests. Firing the sweep during a declared attack after your opponent has committed turns a symmetrical-looking board into a rout. It is a piece of black interaction that reads as flexible on paper and plays as ruthless against exactly the decks that would otherwise punish a spot-removal-heavy hand.