Pull Under

As removal, -5/-5 at instant speed for six mana is a rate that creep buried years ago: black has had cheaper, cleaner kill spells since the earliest sets, and even a sorcery-speed version of nearly this effect would belong only to the slowest decks. The reason to look twice is the Arcane subtype. In the spirit-and-arcane era, Arcane spells were the things splice latched onto: a card with splice onto Arcane could attach its own effect to any Arcane spell as it resolved, so a deck stacked with cheap Arcane spells could chain riders for a fraction of their printed cost. Pull Under is a host, not a rider. It carries no splice itself; it is the kind of spell you want to resolve so the spliced effects come along, and a -5/-5 kill clause anchors a chain well. The choice of a toughness reduction over outright destruction is the other deliberate touch: it ducks indestructibility and regeneration, killing things a Murder-style effect cannot. It only ever points at a single creature, so what resolves is one removal spell wearing whatever else you have spliced on, not a sweeper. Evaluated in isolation, this is overcosted destruction; evaluated as a node in an Arcane engine, it is a kill spell you were paying for anyway. That dependence is also why it never traveled far past the mechanic that defined it.