Feast of Flesh

The X here is not the joke you think it is. For one black mana, the floor is a strict one-toughness creature kill plus a single point of lifegain: X equals 1, and almost every game you cast it that floor is exactly what you get. The escalation clause counts every copy named Feast of Flesh sitting in all graveyards, which means the card only grows after earlier copies have already resolved (or been milled). This is self-referential scaling that rewards stacking multiples rather than building around anything external: the second copy reads for two, the third for three, each one paying for its bigger effect with the spent copies behind it instead of with mana or cards in hand. The size ties to graveyard arithmetic rather than mana invested, trading time and attrition for reach. The lifegain rider scales in lockstep, so a late copy that hits a four-toughness threat also claws back four life, turning a one-mana removal spell into a modest stabilizer deep in a grind. None of that changes the most honest read: the first one is a one-mana, one-toughness answer with a point of life attached, and the whole design is built so the second, third, and fourth are the ones that actually matter.