Defiler of Souls

The symmetry is the whole engine here, and the asymmetry is what makes it cruel. A multicolored creature in a two-color shell answers its own upkeep tax by simply playing gold and hybrid bodies that the sacrifice clause cannot touch; the opponent, building from a single color or leaning on mono-colored utility, feeds the demon every turn. This is a payoff built specifically to punish color discipline, turning the most efficient deckbuilding instinct (clean, focused mana) into a liability. It belongs to a small school of design that taxes board presence rather than the player's hand or life total, and it does so on a fast clock: a flying 5/5 ends games in four swings while the ground attrition runs in the background. The trick is that the demon never asks its controller to commit to the symmetric cost, only to dodge it, so the same card that looks even-handed on paper is a one-sided grinder once your board is full of gold creatures and theirs is not. It rewards a wedge or shard build that can flood the table with multicolored permanents, and it reads as a deliberate inversion of mono-colored aggro's strengths: the more streamlined your opponent's colors, the more the upkeep trigger bleeds them out one creature at a time.