Umbral Juke

Edict effects have always fought the same losing battle against tokens: hand your opponent a spare creature to feed the sacrifice and Diabolic Edict does nothing. The clever part of this modal design is that it answers that objection from both directions at once. The removal half is a "sacrifice of their choice" edict, so it slips past hexproof, protection, and shroud the way Cruel Edict and Chainer's Edict always have, hitting the untargetable threat that a Doom Blade cannot. But when the edict is dead weight (the board is empty, or the opponent has fodder to spare), the second mode turns the same card into a 2/1 flier: a body that both blocks and attacks, and one that happens to be a token the mode never has to sacrifice to. The design smooths out the edict's oldest weakness, which is that it is a blank against an empty board and a favor against a wide one. Neither half is spectacular on rate, and that restraint is the point: an instant that is never fully dead is worth more than a stronger effect you sometimes cannot cast productively. The flexibility lives in the timing, too, since holding it up threatens a sacrifice on the opponent's turn while quietly keeping the token option open if nothing worth killing appears.