Castigate
Discard effects ask the opponent to pitch a card of their choosing; Castigate hands you the choice instead. By revealing the hand and letting you exile rather than discard, it does the structural work of a precision disruption spell at the cost of a second color. The exile clause matters more than the color split: against decks that lean on graveyard recursion or want their pitched cards back, removing a threat from the game entirely is a different proposition than shuffling it into a discard pile. The nonland restriction is the honest part of the bargain. You see everything, but you cannot strip a land to keep them off color, so the spell is at its sharpest when it pulls a singular answer or combo piece and at its weakest as a topdeck against an empty hand. This is the white-black tax on early-era hand attack: mono-black got Duress and Distress and the eventual Thoughtseize, but folding white in buys the upgrade from discard to exile, the same trade Vendilion Clique and later targeted exile effects would refine. It rewards knowing exactly what you are looking for before you cast it, which is the whole appeal of proactive disruption: not denying a random card, but reaching into the hand and taking the one that beats you.


