Gallowbraid

Five mana for a 5/5 trampler was an honest deal when this Phyrexian Horror was printed, and the upkeep is the tax that buys it back. What sets it apart from the period's other cumulative-upkeep creatures is the currency: where those bled your mana base dry turn over turn and choked your development, this one drains the resource a black aggressive deck has the most of and minds the least, right up until the age counters pile on. The cost climbs by one life each turn (one, then two, then three, then four), so the running total compounds quickly even though no single payment is back-breaking early. The escalation is brutal over the long haul yet generous in the window that matters, because a deck running this wants to be closing the game before the tax outpaces its life total anyway. That alignment between the creature's clock and its self-imposed fuse is the clever part: the card is honest about wanting to win fast, and it punishes you in exact proportion to how long you stall. The fuse length is set by your own life total, which turns each upkeep payment into a running estimate of how much board you still think you can win with. Paying in life rather than mana swaps a development problem for a sustainability one, and a creature built to race rarely lives long enough for sustainability to be what kills it.