Deathlace

It paints a spell or permanent black, and in 1993 that was supposed to matter. This belongs to the five-card "Lace" cycle (one per color: Lifelace, Chaoslace, Thoughtlace, Purelace, and this one), a quintet built on the assumption that color-changing would be a load-bearing interaction layer in Magic's strategy space. The pitch was that decks would lean on color-hosers (Karma, Gloom, the various Circle of Protection effects, the color-specific Blasts) and that a one-mana instant retyping a spell or permanent's color would be the surgical answer: recolor your own threat off-color to slip past a hoser, or flip a spell on the stack so a color-locked answer could reach it. The bet did not pay off. The hosers R&D expected to anchor the format never demanded this much dedicated support, and a card whose sole function is to enable another card always loses its slot to a card that does something on its own. The cycle is a clean window into early R&D's theory of the game: that color identity itself would be a contested resource, fought over at instant speed, rather than a constraint settled before the match began. What's left is a curiosity, plus the occasional combo enabler wherever a narrow color-change effect manages to find a home.