Yawgmoth's Vile Offering

Two full cards' worth of text collapsed into one black sorcery: reanimate the best dead creature or planeswalker in any graveyard, then destroy any creature or planeswalker on the board. A single resolution can swing two permanents at once, netting the sort of tempo that usually takes a turn cycle of separate removal and recursion to build. The "up to one" on each clause is the concession that saves it from dead draws: with empty graveyards it works as pure removal, and against an open board it works as pure recursion, so half a target still buys you half the spell. Naming Yawgmoth (the Phyrexian dark god) on an effect this lopsided is not idle flavor: the spell hands you power and then exiles itself, the bargain paid in full, the door shut so it can never do it again. The price sits in the frame that gates it: you can only cast it while a legend is already in play, which anchors the card to decks built around a marquee creature or planeswalker rather than a pile of interchangeable value. That constraint is the whole balancing act. An effect that reanimates and removes in the same breath would be oppressive at instant speed or off a bare board; tethering it to a centerpiece legend, at sorcery speed, and to a single cast makes it a reward for having already committed to a signature threat rather than a tool anyone can jam.