Cabal Torturer

A black mana and a tap shave a single point off any creature, again and again: not enough to kill much on its own, but enough to mop up a token, finish a blocker someone else already chipped, or sit across the table as a deterrent that makes every attack into it a losing trade. The -1/-1 wears off at cleanup, so it doesn't bank toward a bigger kill across turns; the base mode is pressure, a tax on the opponent's small creatures that compounds turn over turn rather than within one. Threshold is where the design earns its keep. Once seven cards have piled into your graveyard, five mana and the same tap throw a -2/-2, scaling the pinger into real removal exactly when a long, grindy game has stocked the yard to make it possible. That is the recurring promise of every threshold creature, a body that gets meaner the deeper the game runs, but it's wired here into a sacrifice-free removal engine instead of a beater, which is the rarer use of the mechanic. The cost is steady: the 1/1 frame does nothing the turn it lands and demands mana every turn after to earn its keep. It belongs to a patient, color-committed shell happy to trade early tempo for the kind of inevitability that dismantles a board one point at a time.