Torment of Venom

Three -1/-1 counters is the half that always resolves: it permanently shrinks a creature, wipes X/3s and smaller off the board, and does it as counters rather than damage, so it slides past indestructibility, past prevention shields, and past any regeneration or toughness-that-resets tricks a burn spell has to respect. Against a bigger creature the counters still land; they just leave it standing, which is where the second clause is meant to earn its cost. That clause is a punisher in the old mold of effects that hand the opponent a menu of resources to surrender, and the wrinkle is who benefits from the choosing: the player picking knows their own hand, board, and life total best, so they concede whichever loss stings least. Flush with life or short on creatures worth keeping, they simply take the 3 and the disruption evaporates. It bites only when all three outs hurt at once: a low life total, a hand too thin to shed, a board where every nonland permanent is doing work. The cost of stapling a tax to removal is the rate itself. Four mana for a single-target shrink that reliably kills only the small things, plus a resource pinch the opponent always sizes to their advantage, is a steep ask. What you get is a removal-and-disruption hybrid whose disruption is real but always conceded on the target controller's terms, never the caster's.