Neutralize the Guards

Sweeping -1/-1 at instant speed sits at a very specific power band: enough to wipe a board of tokens and mana dorks, sharp enough to blow out a combat step where an opponent has crashed in with a wide low-toughness attack, but too shallow to threaten a real board. That ceiling is the point. Anthem effects, +1/+1 counters, and any creature with two or more toughness survive, so the spell reads less as removal and more as a scalpel aimed at go-wide strategies and the aristocrats-adjacent decks that run their armies at a single point of toughness. The surveil 2 rider is what turns a narrow answer into a card worth playing: it smooths draws, fuels graveyard payoffs, and means the spell is rarely dead even when the opponent has nothing small on the board. That pairing follows a broader design logic black has leaned into for years, stapling a card-quality clause onto conditional removal so the floor never bottoms out (Fatal Push into revolt, the various cantripping edicts). Here the ability comes at instant speed, which is where its real value lives: you can hold it through your opponent's attack step, wait to see the full width of the swing, and only then decide whether the sweep or the graveyard fill matters more. The body of the spell is modest; the flexibility of when you cast it is the design.