Sarkhan's Scorn
Most damage-based removal fixes its output the moment it is printed: three from Lightning Bolt, whatever the mana buys, forever. This one reads a clock instead, dealing damage equal to the number of turns you have begun. The counter tracks only your turns, which quietly reshapes the math: it is not measuring how long the game has run, it is measuring how many turns you personally have taken, so a control shell drawing out a grind sees the number climb steadily while a race shortens the window on both sides. Cast on your third turn, it deals three, a real answer to most early bodies; the incentive is to hold it, because every turn you survive pushes the ceiling higher, and the deck that wants this big is the deck built to sit behind it. Its targets are the narrow part, restricting it to creatures and planeswalkers, but that second half is the interesting reach: burn answers a planeswalker far less often than a creature, and this one names them outright. It does so at instant speed, so the tally keeps rising until the moment you finally spend it. The trade is front-loaded certainty for a delayed payoff: you give up a guaranteed number for a spell that arrives cheap and grows into a scaling answer the longer you stay in the game, aimed squarely at the permanents fixed-damage removal reaches least reliably.
