Converter Beast

The rate here is a deliberate misdirection: the printed body is a 0/1 that does nothing, and the entire investment sits on the enters trigger. Incubating 5 produces an Incubator token carrying five +1/+1 counters, which means the four mana buys a stored 5/5 rather than a body on the board. That deferral is the whole design tension. The counters exist immediately, but the artifact creature they belong to does not: you owe two more mana to flip the Incubator, and until you pay it, the value is inert and vulnerable to any answer that hits artifacts before it hits creatures. That splitting of when-you-pay from when-you-get is what makes the card read strangely on its stat line. It behaves less like a green beater and more like a two-part transaction, front-loaded on green mana and back-loaded on a colorless activation, with the flimsy 0/1 shell serving only as the delivery mechanism for the token. Incubate as a mechanic leans on this exact gap: it lets a card promise a threat now and collect on it later, and this creature is close to the purest statement of that idea, spending its full mana value on a token that still asks for more before it can attack.