Genesis of the Daleks
A snowballing token engine that ends in a cruelty. The three creation chapters each read the current lore counter total, so a Saga left unanswered spits out an escalating army: one Dalek, then two, then three, all with menace, all sitting behind the enchantment that made them rather than any board wipe you cast yourself. That accumulation is the setup for the fourth chapter's real work. The villainous choice mechanic hands the opponent a decision where both doors hurt, and this one is calibrated so the trap tightens the more Daleks you built: destroy all Daleks and make each opponent lose life equal to their combined power, or leave your Daleks alone and sweep every other creature on the board instead. The opponent picks their poison, but you chose the terms by loading the Saga with bodies first. It functions as a one-sided asymmetric wipe wearing the costume of a fair choice: whichever door they open, your swarm either burns them for its own accumulated power on the way out or survives while the rest of the field is cleared. The whole thing is built to be inevitable rather than immediate; six mana buys a three-turn clock that resolves the same lethal math regardless of what your opponent would prefer, which is exactly the kind of slow-burn menace the source material trades on.
