Plague Wind

The one-sided wrath, written for the era before one-sided wrath was something you could afford to want. Nine mana to sweep every opponent's board while your own survives reads as pure luxury: by the turn you can cast it, the game is usually already settled or already lost. That gap between the dream and the cost is exactly the point. Symmetrical sweepers like Wrath of God or Damnation are cheap because they hurt you too; breaking the symmetry has always carried a steep premium, and this is the bluntest accounting of that premium ever printed. There is no recursion clause, no creature attached, no second mode, just total destruction and an anti-regeneration rider that slams the door on any creature trying to crawl back, paid for in full at nine mana. It belongs to a lineage of black "you keep yours" effects that Wizards has spent decades trying to price more aggressively: later designs found cheaper angles through life payment, restrictions on what gets hit, or attaching the effect to a body. Plague Wind is the unrefined version, the proof of concept that asymmetry is worth almost any cost a control deck is willing to pay, and the reminder of just how much that cost used to be.