Capricopian

Politics rendered as combat math. Its controller declares the attack the way any attacker does, but from that moment forward the choice of target passes to whoever sits under the axe: only the defending player, only during declare attackers, can pay to grow the creature and swing it toward someone else at the table. That inverts who owns the pressure. Normally the attacking player decides who gets hit and everyone else negotiates around it; here the person already targeted holds the wheel, buys their way out of the line of fire, and hands a bigger threat to the next seat. It is a hot potato with a body attached, and every redirection makes the potato meaner, because each escape leaves a counter behind. The X sets the starting size, so it can arrive as a token nuisance or a real clock, but the counter guarantees it only escalates from wherever it lands: whoever survives it inherits the sum of everyone else's panic purchases. The timing gate is what stops the ability from being a free gift. You cannot pre-empt the swing on your own turn or buy safety in advance; the price comes due when the goat is already pointed at you, and only then. What it manufactures is the table-wide bargaining that free-for-all games run on: a shared liability nobody wants to be holding when the music stops, growing worse the longer everyone keeps passing it along.