Deadly Derision

The math is transparent once you set it against Hero's Downfall, which kills any creature or planeswalker for one mana less. The unconditional targeting is not what the extra pip buys: that price point already existed. The whole surcharge here is the Treasure. You pay one more black-adjacent mana up front and get a fraction of it back the moment the spell resolves, which reframes the exchange. Black's clean removal has always been a tempo-negative one-for-one: Doom Blade and its descendants trade card for card and leave you a mana behind on the turn you cast them. This is still a one-for-one (the Treasure does not draw you a card, and anyone selling it as card advantage is selling), but the token refunds part of the investment, so answering a threat also seeds whatever you cast next turn. Destroy something now, crack the Treasure later, and the removal has effectively subsidized your development. The cost of that arrangement is speed. Four mana buys the flexibility and the mana rebate, but it means this is not the answer you reach for when the board is actively racing you; against fast starts, a one-shot Treasure arrives a turn too late to change the trajectory. This is a card that wants a long game, where the rebate compounds and the any-color output smooths a splash. It trades immediacy for back-end value, and knows exactly which half of the tradeoff it is on.