Dementia Bat

The arithmetic is the whole problem. Five mana puts a 2/2 flier on the board; another five mana, plus the creature, fires the discard. Ten mana and a sacrifice spread across casting the body and activating it once, all to land a Mind Rot stapled to a small evasive blocker. That total places this in an era when discard-on-a-stick was costed as if hand attrition were a luxury rather than something a deck could lean on. The design splits a familiar effect into installments: an air threat that pressures life totals while you wait, then a disruptive payoff cashed in whenever the mana is free. The deferral is the intended hook, letting you hold a clock and convert it to hand attrition only when you have nothing better to spend on. But the conversion rate never repays the patience. Against the unconditional two-card discard that a sorcery delivers for a handful of mana with no creature attached, dividing the same effect across a fragile body and a steep activation asks far too much for far too little. What it captures is a transitional moment in how black's hand disruption was priced: the effect was feared enough that designers buried it behind a creature, an activation, and a sacrifice, hedging against the day a cheaper version would expose how little the wrapping was worth.