Invasion of Kaladesh // Aetherwing, Golden-Scale Flagship

The battle chassis turns an artifact-count payoff into something an opponent gets to contest, and that sequencing is the whole design. The front side is cheap and immediately generative: a 1/1 flying Thopter arrives the instant the Siege does, before you have committed a single point toward defeating it. That token is not the reward for winning; it is a down payment, an artifact you can spend chipping the defense counters, blocking, or crewing while you grind toward the flip. The reward waits on the other side. The flagship's power is a live count of every artifact you control at the moment it swings, and it does not exist while the battle is being fought, so it cannot help clear the defenses that gate it. It arrives only after you have earned the defeat, sized to whatever artifact density you assembled in the meantime. Crew 1 is nearly free once the Thopter (or any creature) is around, so the payoff rarely sits inert waiting for a pilot, and flying lets the accumulated power sail over ground blockers rather than getting chumped on the swing. The tension is deliberate: the caster has to grind through the front side, spending attackers to strip the Siege's defense counters, before the scaling body on the back ever touches the board, and that whole window is time an opponent has to disrupt the artifact count the flip is counting on.