Rain of Tears

Black's clean take on land destruction, priced to the era's symmetric standard of three mana for one land. The lineage runs through Stone Rain, the red baseline every land-destruction spell gets measured against: same effect, same cost, just relocated into black's slice of the pie at the double-pip rate black tends to charge for crossing into another color's specialty. That color shift is what the card exists to explore. Land destruction is fundamentally a red and (later) green mechanic, so a black version asks what it means for black to do the job: black already wants you behind on resources while it grinds card advantage and drains life, and stripping a land early feeds that attrition plan without bending black's identity the way more invasive effects would. The commitment is the tax for borrowing red's tool, heavy enough to stop the card from being a free splash. As a teaching-oriented printing, it was also doing instructional work: a single-line sorcery, no riders, no conditions, nothing to puzzle over. That austerity gives it its value as a reference point. When you want to know what plain black land destruction costs, this is the number.