Carnophage

Pay one life or watch your beater nod off at the beginning of your turn: that is the entire bargain, and it stands among the sharpest expressions of black's "life is a resource" axis from the late-nineties color-pie experiments. The 2/2 body comes at a rate a single black mana has no business buying, and the upkeep cost is the bill that makes it legal. The design swaps a mana cost you pay once for a recurring tax you pay forever: every turn you want this creature untapped to attack or block, you bleed a life. That structure ties the card's value directly to clock speed. In a deck racing to close the game early, the few life paid across those turns is a rounding error against the damage a one-drop 2/2 deals; in any game that drags, the tax compounds into a liability, and the creature that opened on a heroic rate starts draining the very resource you need to survive. It runs alongside the era's other life-for-power black beaters: Sarcomancy and Dauthi Slayer pushed the same axis, demanding life or a downside as the cost of admission. The discipline here is elegant precisely because it is self-correcting: the card punishes you for failing to do the one thing it was built to enable, which is win fast.