Noetic Scales

The symmetry here is the whole design: every player's upkeep, anything they control with power greater than their hand size goes home. It punishes the same axis aggressive decks live on (big bodies, an empty hand) and rewards the axis control decks already occupy (small or no board, cards held in reserve). What makes it function as a card-tax rather than a flat sweeper is the relationship it forces between two resources players rarely think of together: your board's power and your hand's count. Empty your hand to deploy a fat threat and the Scales returns it; hold a fistful of cards and your big creatures stay put. The clean break point is power versus cards-in-hand, which means a wall of 1/1 tokens shrugs it off while a hand-emptying beatdown deck watches its work bounce every turn. Skip a draw, dump your hand, and you've handed your own creatures back. It belongs to that vein of Urza-era artifacts built around a single elegant rule that reorganizes how an entire archetype is allowed to operate, less a removal piece than a structural rule change you install on the table. The friction is its own symmetry: it taxes you exactly as hard as it taxes the opponent, so the player who builds to dodge the trigger (low power, full hand) gets to keep a board while the other rebuilds from scratch.