Cabal Patriarch

Repeatable removal that runs on graveyard fuel is the design idea worth holding onto here. The first activation eats a creature from play; the second exiles a creature card from your own bin, so every dying body you feed it becomes a future -2/-2 the patriarch can fire without further board cost. That second mode sets it apart from the era's sacrifice-engine commanders that needed live fodder to keep shooting: a stocked graveyard turns the ability into an attrition machine that drains an opponent's board one toughness pair at a time. The -2/-2 framing matters too. It is a mass-killer for the small creatures of its day and a softener that lets the 5/5 body finish midsize threats in combat, but it leaves the genuinely large alone unless you chain activations, which the price per use makes a real mana question rather than a free button. What keeps it grounded is the sequencing: each -2/-2 demands a resource you have to manufacture beforehand, so the patriarch rewards a sacrifice-themed shell that produces death triggers and graveyard volume rather than a deck that just wants a removal stick. There is a quiet tension between the two modes, too: feeding the graveyard mode burns the same creature cards reanimation would want back, so the engine taxes your own recursion plans. Built right, it is a black control center that never runs out of ammunition; built wrong, it sits as an expensive 5/5 staring at an empty bin.