Fugue

Five mana for three cards out of a hand is the design statement: discard at sorcery speed, priced to where it can never be the cheap tempo play that hand attack wants to be. The math is brutal in a vacuum (three-for-one against a full grip) and useless the moment the opponent is empty, which is the friction the cost is paying for. Black's discard line runs from one-mana scalpel work (Duress, Thoughtseize) to symmetrical mass discard (Mind Twist scaling with mana), and this sits awkwardly between: too expensive to disrupt an early plan, too blunt to surgically pull the one card that matters. By the time five mana is available, a hand has usually been spent down to one or two cards, so the spell that empties three is the spell that arrives too late to empty three. That window mismatch (the cost wants the late game, the effect wants the early game) is why bulk discard at this rate never found a permanent home. It reads as a power card and plays as a tempo-negative one, a useful object lesson in how the discard mechanic punishes paying full price for raw card count instead of timing and selectivity.