Creakwood Safewright

A 5/5 stapled to a two-mana cost, sold back to you at a discount you repay one point at a time. Three -1/-1 counters knock the printed body down to a 2/2 you can cast early, and the card climbs from there: one counter shed per end step, but only while an Elf card sits in your graveyard. That gating clause is where the design lives. Left alone, the creature stalls and the counters sit; feed the yard the right card type and it grows a point per turn toward a size the mana cost has no business buying. It reads backward from the usual template. Most creatures that grow over time start small and pile on plus-counters; this one starts oversized on paper, pays the discount up front in minus-counters, and asks a graveyard condition to refund the difference. The Elf requirement does the real balancing: with no fallen tribemate the end-step trigger fails its check, so the card wants a deck that both fields Elves and is willing to spend them, tying its clock to a board that is actively dying and being rebuilt. Build around it and you get a two-drop that eventually threatens far above its rate. Ignore the graveyard condition and it simply idles as a below-rate body, waiting for a tribemate to hit the yard before it moves at all.