Kagemaro's Clutch

The kill spell that pays you for hoarding. Most removal asks you to spend a card to answer a threat; this one scales its effect off the cards you have not spent yet, turning a full grip into a guillotine. Hold seven and the enchanted creature shrinks by seven in each direction, enough to bury almost anything in the format this kind of design came up in. The tension is built into the meter: the moment you start dumping your hand to develop a board, the Aura's bite recedes, so the card rewards the patient control posture that wants a fat hand anyway and punishes the tempo player who tapped out to cast it. That makes it an awkward fit for the aggressive black decks that usually crave cheap removal, and a natural one for the durdling, card-advantage shells that can afford to sit on resources. The Aura framing carries its own liability, the one every minus-X/-X enchantment shares: it does nothing the turn the creature leaves (a sacrifice outlet or a bounce spell answers it for free), and against an empty board it sits dead in your hand, an investment with no target. It is a removal spell whose strength is a function of your own restraint, which is a strange and specific virtue to ask of a card meant to kill things.