Noxious Gearhulk

Black has always paid a premium to remove a creature outright, and this Gearhulk folds that premium into a body that justifies six mana on its own. The kill is the headline, but the lifegain is the part that reshapes the math: drawing the destroyed creature's toughness back as life turns the play from pure tempo into a swing, which matters most against the aggressive decks that would otherwise punish a top-end drop. Crucially, the destruction is a "may," and it can name your own creature when life is what you need rather than removal: a small wrinkle that makes the trigger a controlled board-trade with upside, distinct from a sacrifice (the destroyed creature still cares about indestructibility, and nothing of yours is fed to a sacrifice cost). Menace on a 5/4 closes the gap most expensive removal-creatures leave open, where the body trades down or chumps the turn after it lands; here the construct keeps applying pressure and demands two blockers. It belongs to the colored-artifact Gearhulk cycle, each a six-drop stapling a marquee enters-the-battlefield effect to a hard-to-kill frame, and the black one is the most universally playable because spot removal that gains life is a need every black deck eventually has. The longstanding problem with black's finishers is that they tend to be fragile or slow; this answers it by compressing removal, a clock, and a life cushion into a single resolve, asking for nothing in return but the mana.