Oketra's Last Mercy

A reset button with a hangover. The first half is the dream: no matter how far underwater you've gone, your life total snaps back to its starting value, which in most games turns a single topdeck into a full cushion against burn or an aggressive curve. The second half is the bill, and it is steep. Your lands stay tapped down through the following turn, so on that turn your mana comes largely from outside them: creatures that tap for it, treasures, rituals, a land you play that turn, and whatever lands happened to still be untapped when you cast this. That near-total mana lockout is the whole balancing act, and it bites harder because this is a sorcery: you cast it during your own main phase, never as an instant-speed answer to an attack already declared. You commit to the swing in advance, deferring the mana cost to next turn rather than paying it up front. So the real decision is timing. Fire it early, against a board you could have stabilized by ordinary means, and you have donated a turn of dead mana. Fire it when you are genuinely about to die, with the board stalled and your hand idle anyway, and the hobbled turn costs you little you were going to spend regardless. This is survival bought in a single pulse rather than accrued incrementally: the question is never how much life you gain but whether you can survive a turn played on almost no mana at all.