Wand of Denial

A repeatable, taxing form of library disruption from an era that thought top-of-deck control deserved its own engine. The design idea is denial-by-attrition: not countering a spell, but quietly excising the card before its owner ever draws it, one nonland at a time. The two costs are what keep it honest. The tap means it bites once per turn cycle, so it cannot empty a library in a flurry; it grinds. The two-life payment is the real governor, turning each activation into a self-inflicted clock that the opponent never has to pay attention to. Against a deck running thin on lands, the wand becomes a slow vise, peeling away threats while the controller bleeds out a little more each turn; against a flooding draw, it does nothing but spin uselessly, looking at lands it cannot touch. That conditionality is the whole balance: the card is only good when the opponent's library is good, which means it punishes exactly the decks built to do something powerful next. The information matters as much as the effect, since you always learn the top card before deciding whether to spend the life, which makes it a peek wrapped around a denial. A patient, almost passive-aggressive piece of disruption, designed for grinders who would rather win by making the other deck slowly stop working than by ever attacking it directly.