Power Word Kill

The typeline exclusion list is the whole design. Efficient creature removal for two mana, at a speed and rate black has historically rationed behind riders (life loss, sacrifice, edict clauses, "nonblack" restrictions that fold against a mirror), gets paid for here with a fantasy taxonomy instead of a drawback. The four excluded types (Angel, Demon, Devil, Dragon) are the flying, top-of-the-curve threats that most decks are actually leaning on, so the price is a hole carved exactly where the payoff creatures live. It reads clean, and against the ground it is; against the sky it is often a dead card. That tax is smarter than a converted-mana ceiling or a color restriction, because it scales with the metagame rather than the card itself: in a field thick with big fliers the exclusions bite hard, and against small deployments it functions as premium point removal. Flavor and balance run on the same lever, a coupling black rarely gets to enjoy without a rider bolted on. It answers how you print cheap, drawback-free-feeling kill in the color that historically pays for it, and the answer is to let the creature you most want dead be the one thing you cannot touch.