Reckoner's Bargain

Black instants that eat a permanent and refill your hand two cards deep run through Altar's Reap, Costly Plunder, and Village Rites. This one widens the sacrifice fodder to include artifacts and staples a life-gain rider onto the draw, scaled to whatever you feed it. Because the sacrifice is an additional cost, you pay it on announcement, before anyone can respond and regardless of whether the spell is later countered. Control no artifacts or creatures and the card sits uncastable in hand until the board supplies chaff. Where it hums is a swarm shell producing expendables: a spent token, a used-up artifact, a creature already flagged to die. Convert that throwaway into fresh cards, plus a life buffer that nudges you toward eating something larger. But the decks best at supplying disposable bodies rarely run high-value ones, so the life clause reads as a small dividend, not a build-around. Casting at instant speed is what earns the black price over comparable card draw elsewhere: you can hold it as combat insurance and fire once a blocker is confirmed doomed. There is a timing trap in that plan, though. A creature that trades in combat is already gone to state-based actions by the time priority returns, so nothing wounded survives to sacrifice. You have to fire Reckoner's Bargain before damage resolves, sacrificing the creature as it stands in the fight, not reaching for it after the exchange has already claimed it.