Deadly Embrace

Black has always paid full freight for unconditional destruction, and the tradition around cards like Doom Blade or Murder is simple: spend the card and the mana, get one dead creature. The second clause here reshapes the sequencing, because the draw counts every creature that died this turn, not just the one this spell kills. Land it into a fresh, wide board and it is an overpriced kill spell that barely replaces itself. Cast it after a combat step where trades happened, after an aristocrats turn where fodder hit the yard, into the wreckage of a fight the opponent picked, and the same five mana buys removal plus a fistful of cards. That is why the price sits where it does: the ceiling is a mid-game blowout that clears a threat and refuels in one motion, and Black rarely gets that for free. The wrinkle is that it tallies all deaths this turn, your own included, so a mutual bloodbath rewards whoever holds this last. It asks you to treat destruction not as a one-for-one but as a payoff you assemble, a more interesting question than most sorcery-speed removal poses. And because it demands an opposing target, the payoff only lands on a turn where something is left to kill: the refund is bolted to the kill, not the other way around.