Blot Out the Sky

Two payoffs stacked on one X, and the threshold between them is the whole design. At any size the card is a flying token engine, scaling the width of your board to whatever mana you can pour into it. But cross the six-mark and the spell stops being an army-in-a-can and adds a full board wipe on top, sweeping every noncreature, nonland permanent off the table. That sweep is symmetrical: it takes your own noncreature permanents right along with your opponent's, so the reward for going big comes attached to a cost you have to build around. What keeps the big mode honest is that the tokens arrive tapped. The destruction resolves the instant the spell does, but the fliers it leaves behind cannot swing until your next turn, so you buy the wrath and the army in one breath yet still have to survive a rotation before either does offensive work. The split is compelling because it pulls both halves of the same X in opposite directions. Small casts want a go-wide payoff to sacrifice or pump; large casts want an artifact-and-enchantment problem to solve, and are content to trade away their own noncreature clutter to do it. A deck rarely wants both jobs at once, so you decide which spell you are actually paying for before you tap out. The threshold clause turns a serviceable token spell into a haymaker the instant the mana is there, without ever making the cheap mode feel like a consolation prize.