Experimental Aviator

The defensive 0/3 body is a tell that this card is paying for its tokens, not its stats. Five mana buys three flying bodies, but the entire offensive output lives in the two Thopters: two power in the air, four damage over two attack steps, while the artificer that makes them is purely a wall on the way down. That split is the design logic. The card wants to live in two ecosystems at once: an artifact-matters shell where each Thopter feeds sacrifice and improvise effects, and a go-wide flyers plan where anthems turn three small bodies into something resembling a clock. The 0/3 shell exists to hold the card back from overshooting, since a design that flooded the board with flyers and swung for relevant damage on its own body would be priced well above five. As a value piece it leaves real material behind after it dies or gets bounced: the artificer trades, the two artifacts persist, and any deck counting permanents (artifact-count payoffs, token doublers, flicker engines that re-trigger the enter ability) sees three things where it paid for one. This is a card that treats Thopters as currency rather than one that needs a finisher.