Go-Shintai of Hidden Cruelty

Most of the Shrine cycle rewards density with card advantage or incremental damage; this one converts the count into a recurring kill spell instead. The end-step trigger is the detail that shapes how it plays. It fires on your turn, after combat and after you have deployed, so the destroy is timed to prune the creatures that survived rather than to answer them at instant speed; it is a pruning tool, not an emergency button. The you pay each turn taxes the loop so it cannot fire for free, and the toughness cap tethers the ceiling to your commitment to the plan: with one or two Shrines on the battlefield it picks off mana dorks and utility bodies, but a wide board turns it into an unconditional answer to individual threats. Early designs of this kind, from the original block that introduced Shrines, leaned on slow value engines; this later generation gives the archetype teeth, and this member is the one that clears blockers and threats before they matter. Deathtouch sits underneath all of it, ensuring the 2/2 still trades up in combat on the turns the count is low or the mana is spoken for elsewhere.