Eyeblight's Ending

Unconditional creature removal at instant speed has always carried a tax, and here the tax is a clause aimed at the card's own kindred type: it destroys anything except an Elf. This is the rare drawback that doubles as a tribal payoff, because the cost only bites when the threat across the table is itself an Elf. Most boards never present that problem, so in practice this is clean three-mana destruction with no exile, no life loss, and no condition beyond a single excluded creature type. The friction is that an Elf deck does not buy immunity from the restriction; it buys an upgrade to the card's flavor and a worse matchup in the mirror, where the spell suddenly cannot point at the opponent's lord or their fattest token-maker. That is the honest reading the rate hides: the discount is real against the rest of the field, but a tribal Elf shell wanting this as an Elf-kindred instant is also the shell most often staring at a legally protected best target. It is a tidy demonstration of how to price removal aggressively without making it universal, by carving the exception out of the exact population the spell exists to support, then letting the mirror collect the toll.