Read the Runes

The trick here is that you pay twice. Most X-draw spells ask only for mana: Stroke of Genius converts blue mana straight into raw cards, full stop. This one keeps that mana cost (X for X cards) but staples a second toll onto the back end, where every card drawn demands a permanent sacrificed or a card discarded. The result is a draw spell that resolves into a question about your board state rather than just your land count. On an empty board it is a clumsy looter, trading hand cards one-for-one. On a developed board it becomes something stranger: a token, a depleted attacker, a spent enchantment, or a permanent that has already given you its value each becomes fuel, and the sacrifice clause stops reading as a penalty and starts reading as a delivery mechanism for death triggers and graveyard fodder. Instant timing is doing quiet work too, letting you hold the spell as a combat-step reaction or cash in doomed permanents in response to a board wipe that would otherwise strand them for nothing. That two-axis cost (mana up front, material out the back) is why the card has always lived in decks that want their permanents in two places at once: on the battlefield until the moment they are worth more in the graveyard, and converted into cards the instant they are not.