Illness in the Ranks

A hoser built for one structural weakness: the difference between a creature and a creature token. Most token strategies trade quantity for quality, fielding swarms of 1/1s that fold the moment a single static effect shaves a point of toughness, and this enchantment is the punishment aimed squarely at that math. A one-mana permanent that wipes a board of saproling, goblin, and thopter chaff while leaving every "real" creature untouched is a brutally lopsided exchange against the right opponent and dead cardboard against the wrong one. That binary is the whole design proposition: there is no scaling clause, no partial credit, no relevance against a deck that casts its threats from hand. It belongs to the family of permanent-based answers, the static analogue to a sweeper you set and forget, sitting on the battlefield to tax every token that tries to enter rather than mopping up once. The -1/-1 framing rather than a death trigger matters: it stacks with other toughness reduction and can shrink larger tokens into removal range, and it suppresses tokens that would otherwise be made after it resolves, which a one-time wrath cannot. A narrow card by intent, the kind of metagame-contingent answer that lives or dies by how many decks at a given moment lean on the token-versus-creature distinction to do their work.