Clockwork Vorrac

The clock is the whole gimmick: four counters that erode every time the creature swings or holds the line, paired with a tap ability that winds it back up. Attack and it shrinks to a 3/3 by end of combat; spend a turn tapping instead and it grows, but a tapped creature neither attacks nor blocks. That tension between fighting and feeding is the design, and it dates the card to Mirrodin's clockwork subtheme, where artifacts mimed wind-up toys that ran down with use. The trample is the one detail that makes the attacking mode less punishing, since a board that chump-blocks still eats the counter loss but lets the excess through. The real wrinkle is that the +1/+1 counters aren't permanently tied to the clockwork conceit: any effect that puts counters on creatures, proliferates, or copies its tap ability sidesteps the natural decay entirely, and an untapper turns the wind-up engine into something that grows without ever sitting still. Stripped of the artifact-set flavor, what's left is a creature whose body is a resource you actively manage turn to turn rather than a fixed stat line, which is a rarer thing than it looks: most counter creatures only ever go up.