Harrier Griffin

The recurring upkeep tap is the quiet half of an aggressive-flyer design whose body, a 3/3 with flying, is otherwise plain at six mana. Every turn it locks down one of the opponent's blockers before combat begins, so a stalled ground board tilts in your favor while the flyer keeps chipping in the air. The catch is timing: the tap fires on your upkeep, so it pins a creature for the turn you are about to attack into, not the turn the opponent swings back. A ground-pounder tapped on your upkeep simply untaps on the opponent's turn and is free to attack again, since blocking only happens during your attack. That narrow window separates it from Pacifism on legs; it pins a defender just long enough to push damage through, then releases it. The body is purely a delivery system for the engine: the rate is unremarkable in isolation, but the value compounds the longer it survives, since every upkeep is another forced tap. It belongs to a long line of evasive creatures whose real text is the repeatable nuisance bolted onto the swing, where the prospect of a tap-down arriving every turn is what the opponent actually has to answer.