Merciless Repurposing

Removal that hands you a payoff instead of a card: the exile clears the board unconditionally, then Incubate 3 leaves behind a token that flips into a 3/3 on your own schedule. The two halves are what make this design tick. Exile is clean and thorough, answering indestructible and recursion-prone threats alike, but the price is six mana at instant speed, a rate that sits well behind the era's efficient black removal. The premium buys the back half: an Incubator waiting in play, a creature you have already paid the counters for and can transform for two mana at your leisure. Most removal is pure subtraction; this converts an opponent's threat into your own board presence one step at a time. Holding the transform cost in reserve is what balances the trade, since the token is inert until you spend the mana, and that delay is precisely why a genuine payoff can ride alongside a hard exile on a single card. It is a two-for-one wearing the clothes of a one-for-one, and what justifies the higher cost is never the kill itself but the promise that the mana you spent removing a creature returns to you as a body of your own.