Mortify

The Orzhov answer that taught a generation what a guild's removal could feel like when it spanned two threat types instead of one. Most premium creature removal demands a tax for also hitting something else: Vindicate reaches everything but asks for a third color's discipline and runs at sorcery speed. This trades the artifact and land coverage for the one upgrade that matters most in the moment a spell needs to resolve, which is the freedom to cast it on the opponent's turn. Destroying a creature or an enchantment at instant speed covers two of the board states that most often beat a two-color deck: the threat that just attacked and the engine that has been quietly accruing value. The clean three-mana rate is the whole point of the design. White contributes the enchantment removal it has always owned, black contributes unconditional creature destruction (no toughness clause, no nonblack restriction, no life payment), and the union is precisely the spell each color wishes it could cast alone. It ages well because it refuses to do too much: no card draw stapled on, no exile clause, no graveyard hook. Just two of the things Orzhov players most want dead, answered at the moment they least want to wait.