Relic of Progenitus

The graveyard hate that earned its keep by not stranding you with a dead card. Most cheap artifact answers to graveyards exile and then sit there: they hold the line, but the slot they occupy goes inert once the threat is gone. This design solves that with a built-in exit. The tap ability picks off one card a turn, useful as ongoing maintenance against a recursion engine or a delve payment you want to deny; the second mode exiles the artifact itself to wipe every graveyard clean and, in the same breath, replaces itself with a fresh card. That cantrip clause explains its long tenure across constructed: it answers Tarmogoyf, Snapcaster Mage, dredge, and reanimation while costing you nothing in the late game, because cashing it in draws you back to even. The exile-all is a one-shot sweep rather than a continuous lock, which is the line that separates it from a hard graveyard prison like Rest in Peace; it is a reset button, not a permanent seal. Cash it for the sweep and the card, and the artifact is gone afterward, with no lingering board presence to leverage. That tradeoff (incremental pressure now, a clean sweep plus a card later) is what made it the default maindeckable answer for fair decks that wanted graveyard insurance without paying a real cost when the hate turned out to be unnecessary.