Certain Death

Six mana for unconditional creature kill is the price black has always paid when a removal spell carries no string attached. There is no clause about nonblack, no exile-versus-graveyard distinction, no cap on the size of what dies: name a creature and it is gone, with a four-point life swing thrown in for the inconvenience of waiting until turn six. That bundled drain is the tell that this is a common-rarity design, the kind of effect that hands a color a clean, no-questions-asked answer at the top of its curve and asks nothing of the deck except the mana to cast it. The two-life gain and two-life loss together tilt an aggressive race or pad a life total against a grind, but the rate is the real story. Black's removal has always traded efficiency against certainty: Doom Blade asks two mana and a color restriction, Hero's Downfall asks three for instant speed and a planeswalker clause, and this asks six for neither the speed nor the discount, only the certainty its name promises. It is the floor of the genre, the spell that exists so a color is never without a hard answer to a creature nothing else can touch, sold at full retail to anyone willing to wait until they can afford it.