Grief

The evoke elementals answered a question hand attack had always dodged: how do you make a turn-one strip that costs no mana at all, without simply giving away the game the moment the tempo swing ends? The answer is a two-part card. Exile a black card from your hand and this arrives for free, forces a discard on the spot, then dies. You are down two cards for one, but the trade happens on your terms and at the earliest possible window, before the opponent can deploy the very card you take. Whether that math is worth it depends entirely on what you strip. The strip is an enters trigger, not a spell, and that is the design axis everything hangs on: because the discard fires on entry rather than on cast, any effect that blinks the elemental or returns it from the graveyard fires the strip again, turning a one-shot into a recurring lock. Left on the battlefield instead of evoked, the 3/2 with menace closes games without help, so the free-cast line is a real decision rather than reflex. What the pairing resolves is the standing weakness of every discard spell: hand attack peaks on turn one and decays into a dead topdeck by the midgame. Stapling the effect to a creature with an alternative cost keeps both ends live, the free early strip and the late-game body worth hard-casting.