Keeper of the Dead

A repeatable removal engine gated behind a graveyard race, which is a far stranger balancing lever than the rate suggests. The activation costs only one black mana and a tap, but it refuses to fire unless you have buried at least two more creatures than your target: the ability checks the comparison as you activate it, so you cannot grind down an opponent whose graveyard stays within two of yours. That single restriction reverses the usual logic of a removal creature. Instead of pure card advantage, it asks you to win an attrition war first, then converts your lead into an ongoing answer once the bodies start piling up. The nonblack clause keeps it from gunning down mirror threats and quietly nudges it toward a base-black control shell where the disparity in dead creatures tends to swing your way anyway. It is a design built for the grind: weak against a clean board, oppressive once both players have spent their creatures into a stalemate. The 1/2 body is incidental, a chump and a tap-target rather than a clock. What makes the card more than a niche pinger is the way that graveyard-count gate turns the card into a reward for surviving, the late-game payoff for a deck whose whole plan is to outlast.