Eye Gouge

The clause that destroys a Cyclops is the entire reason this card is a curiosity rather than a footnote: it is a hyper-specific tribal hoser stapled to an otherwise generic one-mana shrink effect. The base mode, a -1/-1 instant, clears the smallest creatures and shaves a point off something larger, the kind of marginal trick that fills out a black removal suite. But the second sentence is what designers reach for when they want to plant a hard answer to one named creature type into a set without breaking the rate elsewhere: if the target happens to be a Cyclops, the -1/-1 stops mattering and the creature simply dies, regardless of its toughness. It is a piece of set-internal mechanical storytelling, a removal spell built to punch through whatever oversized one-eyed body the set put in front of it, and it carries no weight at all once you leave that context. The design move is older than this card: pinpoint anti-tribal removal that reads as a flavor joke first and a card second, useful exactly when the table is full of the named type and inert otherwise. What makes it worth a glance is the honesty of the construction. There is no pretense that the -1/-1 alone justifies the slot; the destroy clause is the card, and it only fires against a sliver of the creature pool.