Drinker of Sorrow

Five power for three mana with a drawback that is two drawbacks stacked: it can't block, so it offers nothing on defense, and it eats one of your own permanents every time it deals combat damage. That second clause is the dangerous one, because the sacrifice isn't optional and isn't restricted to the attacker itself: each hit forces you to feed it a land, a creature, an enchantment, whatever you can spare. The math is the appeal. A 5/3 closing at this rate races almost anything in its weight class, and against an opponent without a blocker the body simply outpaces the cost of the tax. The trick is making the tax pay for itself rather than bleeding you white. Feed it tokens, or feed it permanents you wanted in the graveyard anyway, and the downside curdles into an engine. The card sits in a small family of efficient creatures whose stat lines are bought with a recurring sacrifice, and it is among the bluntest of them: no toughness to survive a trade, no evasion to guarantee the trigger fires on your terms, just raw power and a bill that comes due whenever it deals combat damage. It rewards a deck already built to turn dying permanents into value, and punishes the player who reaches for the size without a plan for the cost.