Hollow Specter

Where Hypnotic Specter taxes a single card off the top of an opponent's hand at random, this one hands you the choice and scales it: connect, pay the toll, and you see X cards before deciding which one hurts most to lose. Random discard is a numbers game; targeted discard at the attacker's discretion is surgery, and a flyer that performs surgery every combat step is a clock and a stripping engine in one body. The payment is the lever that stops it from outclassing its predecessor outright: each hit costs real mana, so an empty turn or a board you needed to develop instead is a hand left intact. It rewards a deck with mana to spare in the midgame, the point where an opponent is hoarding answers rather than spending them. The combat-damage trigger is also its ceiling: it does nothing through a blocker, nothing against a wall of fliers, nothing if you cannot land the hit. Built as a midrange beater for black's hand-disruption tradition, it asks you to keep an evasive 2/2 alive long enough to turn the corner from tempo into resource denial, and to bank the mana for when it connects.