The War Games

A Saga that seeds every player's board with an army and then charts the arc by which that army disappears. Chapter I hands three tapped Warriors to each player, goaded while the enchantment sits on the battlefield, which is the political lever: goad forces those tokens to attack each combat if able, and to attack a player other than you if they can, so in a multiplayer pod they turn outward and buy you a few turns of everyone else's tempo. The catch, easy to miss, is that goad only redirects when a legal alternative exists; in a duel or once you are the last valid target, the Warriors come straight for you, and the gift stops being a trap. Chapters II and III pump every Warrior on the battlefield with +1/+1 counters, escalating a brawl you are not obligated to enter. Chapter IV is the payoff: you may exile one of your own nontoken creatures to sweep every Warrior off the table, all colors included. That exile is permanent, not a blink, so the reset costs you a real body. The cleverness lives in the fixed clock. The Saga advances on its own after your draw step, so you do not choose when the wipe arrives, only whether to pay for it when Chapter IV resolves. And if the Saga is answered before then, the goad clause dies with it: the Warriors linger, no longer compelled, and the whole engine stalls into a standoff nobody wanted.