Natural Balance

A symmetry spell that does two opposite things at once, and the elegance is in how the threshold of five lands cuts both directions. Anyone flooded gets pruned down to five; anyone starved gets pulled up to five. The design intent is restorative: a green Wrath of God aimed at the manabase rather than the board, returning every player to the same flat starting point regardless of whether they overcommitted or stumbled. The flaw, and the reason it became a cautionary tale in symmetry design, is that "symmetrical" on the card and "symmetrical" in practice are different things. A player who has already spent their lands on a board can hand back their excess and lose nothing of value, while the opponent sitting on untapped lands or a ramp engine watches it evaporate; and the search clause hands a basics-only library a free boost while punishing anyone whose deck wanted nonbasics. Sorcery speed and a four-mana cost keep it from being a reactive trick: this is a deliberate reset you build around, not a response you hold up. Green has rarely been given land destruction this clean, and the asymmetry hiding inside the symmetry is exactly why the effect has stayed mostly confined to this one printing rather than becoming a recurring green tool.