Dack Fayden
The plus ability is a loot, not a discard spell: you draw two and pitch two, netting zero cards, which makes it a smoothing tool rather than a way to strip an opponent's hand. Pointed at yourself it digs toward business; pointed across the table it fuels a graveyard you intend to exploit. But the loot is the appetizer. The reason this Planeswalker carries a reputation out of proportion to three loyalty is the minus two, which steals an artifact outright. The math matters: at three loyalty, one activation drops Dack to one, and it takes two turns of plussing to climb back to three, so the theft recurs every third turn rather than relentlessly. That cadence is still punishing in a world where the most degenerate engines, mana rocks, and combo pieces are artifacts, because a single well-timed steal can hand you a game's worth of resources.
The ultimate is the rare emblem that reads as a win condition rather than a bonus: every targeted removal spell, every bounce, every aura becomes a theft, converting the rest of your deck into a permanent-stealing machine. Few games reach it, which is the design's tell; the minus two does enough that the ultimate is a formality. This is the card that codified the Izzet thief identity, a blue-red shell that loots, steals, and recasts rather than building its own board, and later artifact-hungry control decks have all been measured against the floor it set.
