Denethor, Stone Seer

The design mirrors the character exactly: a steward who does not survive his own ambition. The two-mana blue body enters, smooths a draw with scry 2, and then sits as a 1/3 wall until you are ready to spend it, at which point the sacrifice removes it from the board entirely. What it buys is the strangest part of the package: for three generic and a red, you crown a target player and throw three damage anywhere. Handing someone the monarchy is normally a gift, so the design leans on the fact that you pick the recipient and that you are firing the three damage in the same breath. The obvious line is to crown yourself and clear a blocker or finish an opponent, using Denethor as a one-shot palantír-and-pyre: a card that looks at the top of your library, then immolates itself to light the beacons. The split of blue on the body and red in the activation is what makes the sacrifice feel like a commitment rather than a formality; the blue half wants nothing to do with the red payoff, so the card only pays off in a deck reaching into both colors, exactly the Izzet build the flavor promises. It is a rare that ends its own life on the battlefield by design, and the scry is the only value you are guaranteed if the pyre never lights.