Stench of Decay

A symmetrical micro-sweeper whose asymmetry lives entirely in the deckbuilder's hands. Knocking a single point of toughness off every nonartifact creature reads like nothing until you remember what fills the bottom of a curve: token swarms, one-toughness aggressive starts, mana dorks, and the X/1 utility creatures that prop up combo and tempo plans alike. Against the right board it is a one-sided wipe; against a row of fatties it is a dead card, and that gap is the whole point. The instant-speed clause is what earns the slot, letting it ambush an alpha strike or clear blockers mid-combat in a way a sorcery-speed equivalent never could. The artifact exemption is the era's fingerprint: from the days when artifact creatures were black attrition's natural counterweight, carving them out of the effect was a deliberate balancing lever rather than an oversight. Think of it as the small-ball relative of the larger -X/-X effects, trading kill-everything reach for a price you can cast early and a body count that scales with how low your opponent's curve dips. The card asks one question of the pilot: do you know what you are pointing it at? When the answer is yes, three mana erases a board; when it is no, you have spent a turn shaving a point off creatures that will not notice.