Decree of Annihilation

Ten mana for the most complete reset in the game: not destruction but exile, and not partial but total, sweeping artifacts, creatures, and lands off the battlefield, every hand emptied, every graveyard gone. The hard cast is scorched-earth doctrine, the effect a control deck reaches for when it has nothing left and wants its opponent to have nothing at all. But the cycling clause is where the card earns its keep among its sibling Decrees: pay seven and discard it, and instead of redrawing into a topdeck war you trigger an Armageddon at instant speed while replacing the card in hand. That mode is the one that actually shapes deckbuilding, and the trick is that it is perfectly symmetrical: all lands die, yours included. The skill is in breaking parity yourself before you pull the trigger. A ramp deck that has untapped its mana, committed a threat to the board, and only then blows up every land has converted a dead-late bomb into a tempo guillotine, stranding opponents land-light while a clock is already ticking. The full ten-mana cast and the cycling Armageddon answer two entirely different questions, and the gap between them, from "exile every artifact, creature, and land including my own" to "level the lands and draw," is the whole design: a card that asks how badly you want to scorch the earth, and charges you on a sliding scale.