Gurmag Rakshasa

The enters-the-battlefield trigger is a two-headed tempo spike, and the timing window matters more than the numbers do. Without haste, the summoning-sick 5/5 cannot cash in its own +2/+2 the turn it lands: the buff expires before it can attack, so the pump is charity for a creature already able to swing, an evasive threat, or one waiting to trade in combat. The -2/-2, likewise, either kills a creature with toughness 2 or less outright or just shrinks a blocker for that single turn; it clears the way for the rest of the board, not for the demon itself. Read together, the two halves are a single swing-through package built to break a stall on arrival: soften the wall, size up an attacker, push damage the same turn. What the Rakshasa keeps afterward is the body, not the boost. Menace is the part that endures, and it does the finisher work on every subsequent attack: a 5/5 that demands two blockers is hard to gum up in the ground stall this card is designed to close out, and the demon outlasts the temporary swing where a combat trick would leave nothing behind. This is workmanlike black midrange, a creature that arrives, tips a clogged board toward damage, and then keeps applying pressure on its own stats. The ceiling is modest and the plan is honest: a repeatable menace threat with one loud entrance.