Frenzied Arynx

Riot is one of the cleaner tempo-versus-value knobs Wizards has built into a single creature, and this is its common-slot expression: a Gruul beater that lets you decide, on the way down, whether to hit now or hit harder later. The +1/+1 counter makes it a 4/4 that survives more removal and connects for a real chunk with trample; haste turns the same body into an immediate three-point clock. That choice is not free. Both modes commit the same four mana, so the counter and the haste trade directly against each other, and the pump ability quietly reframes which one you want. Feeding six more mana into +3/+0 turns the counter build into a 7/4 trampler and the haste build into a 6/3 that already swung the turn it arrived. In a color pair built to spend everything it draws, that late-game mana sink gives the card somewhere to go once the board stalls, converting flooded lands into damage a single blocker cannot contain. It carries two of Gruul's favorite tensions at once (speed against resilience, and a body that scales with untapped mana) and resolves both without asking its pilot to build around it.