Eater of Days
Nine power for four mana is a rate the artifact slate has never matched, and the reason is printed right under the keywords: enter the battlefield and you forfeit your next two turns. That clause is one of Magic's purest examples of paying for a creature in tempo rather than mana. A 9/8 flyer with trample is a fast clock that ignores chump blockers, but skipping two turns hands the opponent three consecutive turns before you untap again: three draw steps, three land drops, and free rein to assemble removal or a counter-clock while you sit out. Even unanswered, the body needs three swings to close out a twenty-life game, and you get to take exactly one of those turns at a time. The trap most players reach for, reanimating or blinking the body to dodge the drawback, does not work: the ability triggers on entering the battlefield, not on casting, so every new entry pays the toll again. The real outs are effects that sidestep the trigger entirely or shells that turn skipped turns into an asset, where a paused board state feeds the plan rather than fighting it. It belongs to the lineage of extreme-drawback creatures, the kind that asks whether a stat line is worth surrendering agency for, and it remains the cleanest statement of that question: how much of the game would you give up for an enormous body you barely paid for?
