Lamentation

The Elemental Incarnation cycle's black entry has always traded in reciprocity: an enters-the-battlefield line that reads like a good rate on paper, paired with a graveyard clause that pays it back with interest. Here the payment is encore, a mechanic that turns a dead creature into a one-turn army by minting a token copy pointed at each opponent. Every copy re-triggers the enters effect, so a table with three opponents means three creatures destroyed and nine life gained before the tokens even connect in combat. That is the design logic worth sitting with: the destroy-and-gain trigger is deliberately modest for six mana on a 5/4, because the card is not built to be cast once. It is built to be cast, killed or chumped away, and then unloaded from the graveyard for a burst of removal-and-lifegain scaled to the number of players across the table. The sorcery-speed restriction on encore keeps it from being an instant-speed ambush; you commit on your own turn, the tokens attack if able, and everything is sacrificed at end step. What makes the second life so much stronger than the first is precisely that the effect multiplies against a full pod: the front half is a fair trade, and the back half is a haymaker whose ceiling rises with every extra opponent it can point at.