Oath of Lim-Dûl

A black enchantment built to punish its own controller, which only makes sense inside the grim design language of early black, when casting your spells or owning a life total could itself be a liability. The text converts every point of life lost into a tax: each damage point forces a sacrifice of a permanent unless you discard a card, so a single combat step can either strip your board or empty your hand by inches. What reads as a self-inflicted wound is really a strange card-economy lever; the draw ability and the discard escape valve both exist because the enchantment assumes you will be feeding it cards constantly. It eats your resources to keep your permanents on the table, then offers a way to refill at the cost of more mana. The discard-versus-sacrifice choice is the actual content of the design, asking you to price a card in hand against a permanent in play, point by point, while you are taking damage. Almost nothing about it rewards a normal game plan, which is why it has lived as a footnote rather than a working tool: a punishment effect aimed at the wrong player, preserved from a time when black was willing to make its own pilot bleed for the privilege of casting it.