Putrefy

Golgari's answer to the question of what unconditional removal should cost when you can pay two colors for it. Mono-black got Doom Blade and its cousins, all of which dodge something: a color, a creature type, an artifact body. Putrefy dodges nothing on the creature side and reaches sideways to hit artifacts too, the kind of breadth that usually demands a downside. The price here is the second pip and the gold cost: you commit to black and green at once, and in exchange the spell asks no questions about what it kills. The regeneration clause is the tell of its era, a defensive line that mattered when shields-up regenerators still patrolled the format; it reads as vestigial now but cost nothing to staple on. What keeps the card honest is the gap between "destroy" and "exile": indestructible creatures laugh at it, recursive threats come back, and tokens that die for value were never the target. Still, hitting artifact or creature at instant speed for three is a rate that has aged into a baseline. It is the template Golgari removal keeps returning to whenever the guild wants a clean, flexible kill spell, and most of the variants since have either narrowed the targets, raised the cost, or traded the artifact clause for a rider. The original split the difference and never needed to apologize for it.