Nightscape Master

The casting cost is almost a feint: buys a 2/2 whose entire kit is paid in colors it does not show. Both tapped abilities demand off-color pips, which makes the black price pure admission and pushes this body into a Grixis shell where the real work happens on the splashes. That gating, locking a creature's utility behind colors other than the one in its mana cost, is the throughline of the Nightscape cycle and its Stormscape, Crimson, and other counterparts: each wears a single-color frame but functions only across a manabase stretched three colors deep, built to reward the dense multicolor decks an early block was obsessed with. The two halves cover tempo and removal off one creature: a repeatable bounce for and a tap, a repeatable two-damage shock for and a tap. That is more flexibility than a 2/2 usually earns, and the throttle is exactly the kind early designers reached for with effects this open. Each activation taps the creature, so it picks one job per turn and waits to reset, and the double pips demand real commitment rather than a token splash. The result is a card that actively punishes the mono-black decks that would naturally cast it and pays off only the ones willing to commit to Black, Blue, and Red at once, which is the whole argument the era was making about how lands should be built.