Arcbound Lancer

Seven mana for a 4/4 with first strike is a rate nobody would pay on its own, and the card never expected you to. Modular makes the toughness a temporary container rather than a stat: those four counters are insurance that survives the body, sliding onto whatever artifact creature is still standing when this one falls. The affinity-era Arcbound creatures were built to be fungible, and the Lancer is the heavy end of that idea, a four-counter reservoir wearing a deliberately oversized cost so the value lives in the death trigger, not the cast. It pairs naturally with sacrifice effects and modular chaining: dump the counters before chump-blocking, stack them on an Arcbound Worker to keep the pile alive, feed an artifact lord that will carry them somewhere productive. First strike is the small reward for actually attacking with it, letting a counter-loaded body trade up before it ever takes return damage. The design tension is honest about itself: the printed stats are bait, and the real payload is a transferable block of stats that refuses to die with the creature carrying it.