Avatar of Woe

Read the graveyards before you read the mana cost. A 6/5 with Fear and a tap-to-destroy ability looks like an eight-mana investment, but the moment ten creature cards have piled up across all graveyards, the same package drops to two. That threshold is the dial, and it tunes the Avatar to exactly one kind of game: the grindy attrition slog where bodies have been trading for turns and nobody can close. In an empty-graveyard environment it sits inert, a clumsy fatty that happens to tap for removal. In the long game it was built for, it lands early, swings past most blockers, and starts collecting one creature per turn with no regeneration to bail them out. The tap ability is the part that endures regardless of how it got onto the board: it converts a one-shot threat into a repeatable answer, the same Visara the Dreadful style assassin engine that keeps the opposing board thin while a Fear body carries the kill. Summoning sickness and the tap symbol set the price; the destroy clock starts a turn late, and every turn after forces a choice between pointing the Avatar at the red zone or at a creature you want gone. It rewards the slow, creature-heavy decks that struggle to finish under the weight of their own attrition, and it has stayed a recognizable face of black's "let the graveyards fill, then collect" plan across its reprints.