Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver
The plus is a group tax rather than a targeted one: each opponent independently chooses to bleed three life, sacrifice a nonland permanent, or pitch a card, so the pressure lands across the whole table at once instead of singling out one player. That the sacrifice spares lands separates it from Smallpox-style symmetrical attrition, which strips a board down to bare mana; here the opponents lose cards and bodies while their manabase stays intact. The minus three is the emergency valve, a Terminate that refunds a card, so answering a threat leaves you up a resource even as it spends loyalty. The eleven-loyalty ultimate is a decisive finisher: seven damage to each opponent and a fresh grip of seven for you. But loyalty is the honest arithmetic of the design. Entering at five, the plus climbs toward the ultimate three at a time; the minus three costs three loyalty against it. Every removal activation pushes eleven two turns further out, so the card asks whether you are ascending to the finisher or surviving to reach it, and rarely lets you do both. Among the many faces Nicol Bolas has worn in cardboard, this is the one framed less as a single threat to answer than as a clock a whole table is collectively losing to, one where the choice to defend yourself and the choice to end the game are drawn from the same shrinking pool.
