Carrion Howler

Trading a toughness for two power, over and over, as many times as the life total allows: that repeatable life-for-tempo swap is the whole pitch, and also the whole brake. Activate once and the body becomes a 4/1 that hits harder but dies to any incidental ping; activate twice and it is a 6/0 already in the graveyard. The toughness floor does the disciplining work, which is why this reads as a midrange beater that can lunge into the red zone for an extra burst rather than a finisher you rely on: every point of power you buy carries the body closer to dying on the swing. The life cost compounds the restraint, since the resource feeding the pump is the same one the opponent is racing to drain. It sits in the lineage of black's old fragile pump creatures, where the controller is asked to gauge exactly how much they can spend before the trade stops paying. A vanilla 2/2 would be filler; the activation grants an attack ceiling the base stats never advertise, at the cost of a creature that wants to be left alone the instant combat ends.