Face of Fear

Evasion you rent by the turn never compounds the way evasion you own does, and that single line of accounting is the whole problem with this beater. A 3/4 with fear printed into its text attacks past most blockers for free; this one demands a fresh plus a discarded card every combat just to slip through once, and even then it stays answerable, since artifact creatures and black creatures can still step in front. The discard, at least, was meant as a feature rather than a tax: a graveyard-hungry design period leaned on threshold and flashback engines that wanted cards in the yard, so pitching to gain fear could feed something else on the way down. But the math only tilts in its favor with surplus mana, a hand full of cards you wanted to discard anyway, and an opponent short on black or artifact bodies to chump with. Three conditions stacked on a slow body is a narrow door. What lingers is the design instinct rather than the result: fear built as an ongoing decision instead of a static keyword, a beater that asks you to re-buy its evasion turn after turn. The period kept reaching for cards like this before it learned that recurring activation costs on an expensive, unhasty body rarely earn back the down payment.