Nin, the Pain Artist

Damage that hands the victim a fistful of cards: a deal so lopsided it only makes sense once you stop treating the ability as removal. The ping points at a creature and draws its controller the cards, which reads as pure downside until you turn the gun on your own board. Aim it at one of your own expendable tokens or a one-drop you no longer need, and the asymmetry resolves in your favor: you pay X+2 mana, draw X cards, and the opponent gets nothing. That is the tension the whole design is built around. Underneath the removal-spell framing sits a repeatable card-draw outlet, gated by the activation cost and by the fragility of a 1/1 body. The other mode, firing a lethal X at an opponent's creature and letting them refill, looks like a gift, and that is exactly what a punisher deck wants: paired with Nekusar, the Mindrazer or Underworld Dreams, the cards you force into their hand become the kill condition rather than a concession. The cost shape is the elegant part. X appears once in the activation cost but resolves twice, so every point of that variable does double work: a point of damage and a drawn card off the same pip, with the colored pips and the tap keeping it from going free. The 1/1 frame is the counterweight; left unanswered this is an engine, so the body invites the removal that closes the loop.