Discordant Spirit

A mid-90s thought experiment in temporary state, built around a counter mechanic that runs on a strict one-turn clock. The body starts at 2/2, but its real size is a function of how much damage you absorbed during the opponent's turn: each point of damage dealt to you becomes a +1/+1 counter at that turn's end step, and every counter is swept away again at the beginning of your own end step. The timing is the entire design. Counters arrive after combat on the opponent's turn, so the inflated stats are never available to block the very attack that fed them; they sit on the creature through your untap, upkeep, draw, main, and combat, which means the bloated body is yours to swing with before it self-erases. It is a tax on racing you, payable on the back swing. That self-deleting clause is the balancing mechanism: the card cannot snowball under its own power, because nothing it gains survives into a second turn. Counter-based creatures from this era usually accumulated permanently, growing on cast triggers or tribal payoffs; this one builds a threat that exists for exactly one of your turns and then forgets it ever happened. The idea (a creature sized by punishment taken, cashed out on a same-turn clock) is the interesting part. The printed numbers, conditional and bound to a turn structure that rarely cooperated, never made it more than a curiosity.