Choking Fumes

Most board sweepers ask you to pay for symmetry: you trade your own side to clear theirs, or you build around the asymmetry with indestructible threats. This one sidesteps the question by punishing only the act of attacking. Held up at instant speed, it resolves after blockers are declared but before combat damage, shrinking the entire attacking force by a point of toughness at once. Against a wide board of one-toughness creatures it functions as a one-sided wrath; against a swarm of tokens it can erase a turn's worth of work without touching the defender's developing position. The selection mechanism is the whole structure, and it does not target: it affects each attacking creature as a class, which means hexproof and shroud do nothing to stop it. Anything held back is untouched, so the only player who pays is the one who committed to the red zone. That makes it less a removal spell than a tax on aggression, an answer that rewards the patient deck for letting the opponent overextend into open white mana. The -1/-1 counters are permanent rather than a temporary debuff, which compounds against creatures that survive: a 3/3 that lives walks away a 2/2, and a second casting finishes the job. It is a narrow, conditional sweeper, useless against a stalled board and devastating against a committed one, built for the deck that wants to absorb the early game and answer the alpha strike the moment the opponent overcommits.