Drop of Honey

A single green mana buys a recurring sweeper that grinds the board from the bottom up, killing the smallest creature each of your upkeeps and refusing to let regeneration save it. The economy is what makes the design unusual: the self-sacrifice clause acts as the safety valve that keeps the lock from being permanent, so the enchantment evaporates the moment it runs out of fuel. The "can't be regenerated" rider is the technological tell of its era, when regeneration was the default escape hatch for any destroy effect and a designer who wanted the kill to stick had to say so explicitly. Strategically, it asks a question modern green almost never asks: how do you win a board without putting creatures on it? The answer in 1993 was that you usually didn't, which is why Drop of Honey has always lived in the margins, a curiosity for stax-adjacent builds and a centerpiece for the kind of player who reads the singleton-green-pillowfort plan as a real one. Its closer cousin The Abyss arrived two years later in black at four mana with a less punishing trigger, which is the comparison that sharpens the design: green got the effect first, cheaper, and with a built-in expiration date, on the condition that it never quite cares which creature it kills.