Hatchet Bully

The repeating gun whose ammunition is its own board. Most pinger designs pay for their damage with mana and a tap, and stop there; this one adds a third tax that grinds against your own side, shrinking a creature you control every time it fires. That makes the engine self-limiting in a way few ping effects are: you are trading attrition for reach, and the body feeding the activation often dies before the loop runs dry. The cost is also where the design quietly turns clever, because that shrink is a resource you can route on purpose. Point it at a token you no longer need, at something already marked for death, or at a creature whose own +1/+1 counter cancels the penalty out and nets you free damage. Aristocrats shells sharpen the same edge: a creature you were going to sacrifice anyway can pay the activation first, wringing one last point of value before it leaves. The ability is repeatable at instant speed, which lets it sit open as a combat deterrent and a removal threat at once, picking off an attacker or finishing a planeswalker without committing a swing. It is a slow gun, but one that aims itself at whatever the board hands it, and the friction of feeding it is precisely the lever a deck built to spend its own creatures wants to pull.