Tormented Thoughts

Discard spells in black have always priced their card-stripping against a known curve: a fixed number of cards for a fixed cost, with Mind Rot setting the two-for-three benchmark and Hymn to Tourach undercutting it. This one tears up the formula by tying the haul to a creature's power, paid as the cost itself. Sacrifice a small body and you have spent a card and a creature to take one or two; sacrifice something large and the spell suddenly empties a hand. The additional cost cuts hard: you are converting a creature you already control into cards your opponent loses, so the spell is only as good as the board you are willing to dismantle to cast it. That trade reframes what a discard spell is for. Most disruption wants to land early, before the opponent has committed resources; this one wants to land late, after you have grown or pumped a creature and the opponent has refilled, when a single cast can strip three or four cards at once. It asks for an oversized body it can afford to throw away, which is a narrow requirement, and needing both a fat creature and a full enemy hand at the same moment makes it clumsy in fair midrange. What sets it apart from the rest of black's discard is the scaling: conditional, and entirely dependent on what you are willing to sacrifice for it.