Dire Downdraft

Blue's library-tuck spells have always been a tempo trade priced against the risk that the creature comes right back next turn. This design hedges that risk by handing the choice of destination to the creature's owner: they decide whether their threat gets tucked deep or set up for an immediate redraw. That concession is the honesty tax that keeps a conditional three-mana tuck from being a strict upgrade over the removal it imitates, since it never functions cleanly as a hard reset like Time Ebb nor as a pure tempo swing like Repel. The cost reduction is where the real design work happens: the discount fires on the two moments blue most wants a cheap answer, mid-combat against an attacker and after the fact against a tapped blocker or dork. Cast on your own turn at full price, it plays like a clunky four-mana tuck with no upside; held up and cast into an attack, it becomes a three-mana instant that resets a threat and eats the swing, the exact window blue tempo decks are built to punish. The mana cost encodes its own best-use case, nudging you to hold it rather than fire it proactively, and the owner's-choice clause is the balancing counterweight that pays for the discount.