Shriekmaw

Two cards live inside one frame, and the casting choice is the whole point. Pay and you have a piece of targeted removal with no fragile creature attached: destroy any nonartifact, nonblack creature, then watch the 3/2 sacrifice itself, leaving the opponent nothing to remove or trade with. Pay the full and the same destroy trigger arrives stapled to a body with Fear, evasion that lets the elemental finish what its removal started by sliding past most ground defenders. You decide which card you cast at the moment you cast it: cheap interaction when you are behind, a removal spell that also closes the game when the board is grinding. That split became a template. Later evoke elementals run the same logic of a spell now or a creature later, but creature removal is the effect that least wants a perishable body attached, which is exactly why this design holds up better than its kin. Fear is not trim here; it is the reason the full-cast mode beats a generic Doom Blade. Black evasion on a creature that kills something the same turn it lands means the evoke discount is the floor of the card's value, not its ceiling: you are never paying full price for a worse removal spell, you are paying it for a removal spell that keeps attacking.