Immard, the Stormcleaver
The counter here is a savings account, not a ratchet: every enter or attack lets you deposit a charge or withdraw one, and the withdrawal is the entire payload, converting a stored counter into either a four-point burn shot or a turn where blocking becomes suicidal and profitless for the defender. Most counter-based bodies only stack in one direction, locking you into a single trajectory; this one hands you a two-way toggle and makes timing the drawdown the real skill. You bank charges through the turns you are stabilizing and cash them the turn you need reach to close or the swing you need to attack safely into open mana. The Jeskai identity maps cleanly onto that split: red pays out the direct damage of the removal mode, white supplies the lifelink-and-indestructible defensive stance, and blue frames a creature built to keep entering, blinking back, and attacking to refill the meter. A 4/4 for four across three colors is an unremarkable rate, but the body is only the vessel: the counter is the resource, and the creature is the account it lives in. What earns the slot is the recurring decision of when to spend, converting stored charges into either half of the game's two governing pressures, damage or survival, from one permanent that fuels itself by doing exactly what you already wanted it to do.
