Dry Spell
A black sweeper priced at the floor of what a sweeper can do: one point of damage, hitting everything including its caster, for two mana. The design logic is the symmetry tax. Black's color identity has never been allowed clean board wipes the way white gets them, so the cost of access here is paid in self-damage and in a ceiling so low that the spell only clears the smallest creatures. One damage to each player is not incidental flavor; it is the same kind of pact-with-the-self bookkeeping black uses to keep its raw efficiency in check, the principle that later cards make explicit with life payments and Phyrexian costs. What the spell trades away in raw size it gains in being a black answer to swarms of one-toughness bodies at all, a niche black usually has to address through edicts or targeted removal rather than a sweep. The hit to every player is the kind of small clock that matters in a deck already racing, turning a defensive effect into a marginal reach finisher against an opponent low on life. It is a study in how narrow you can make an effect before the color tax stops mattering: against weenies it is a board wipe, and against anything bigger it is a Lava Spike that also pings you.
