Flow of Maggots

Walls were the only thing that could stop it, and almost no creature deck of the era bothered to run them: this 2/2 connects nearly every turn it stays on the table. The escalating upkeep is what licenses that near-guaranteed swing. An age counter lands each upkeep and the rent climbs by a mana on every visit (one, then two, then three) until keeping the beater alive costs more than the damage it deals justifies. The clock runs both ways: you get an evasive body up front, and the card hands you a deadline to convert that pressure before the upkeep drains the mana you wanted for the rest of your turn. That rising lease is what buys the static evasion at this price: an ability strong enough to push damage through almost any board, leased rather than owned, paid for again every turn at a steeper rate. The cycle that shared this keyword mostly hung its cost on enchantments and splashy permanents; here it sits on a cheap attacker, which turns cumulative upkeep into a tempo bet rather than a value engine. The "can't be blocked by non-Wall creatures" line is the era's unpolished evasion templating, written years before Wizards settled on cleaner phrasing, and it overperforms by enough that the upkeep tax had to exist to rein it back in.