Predatory Nightstalker

Edict effects ask a question of design: do you give the controller the choice of what dies, or the opponent? Here the weaker answer (opponent's choice) gets stapled onto a body, and the gentle templating traces back to the product line that printed it. These were simplified, training-wheels sets aimed at new players, which shows in the non-mandatory "you may"; it softens the political sting of forcing a sacrifice at a table of beginners. The pitch relative to the sorcery-speed edicts around it (Diabolic Edict, Chainer's Edict) is the permanent that stays after the trigger resolves: a one-shot removal effect that leaves a 3/2 behind. The trade-off is the one every opponent's-choice edict carries: against a board with a token or a spare blocker, the sacrifice hits the least valuable thing, so the effect wants to resolve into a thinned or empty board. The pricing is the real story. for a 3/2 is well below the curve for a body, and the opponent's-choice clause makes the removal the weakest version of the template. That this much mana buys both an undersized creature and a conditional edict tells you Wizards had not yet learned to price the effect tightly. It is plain black removal-on-a-stick from a period when the edict template was still being calibrated, and the rate reads as a first draft rather than a settled answer.