Ketramose, the New Dawn

Two different clocks run on this card, and confusing them is the easy mistake. The draw-and-drain trigger fires immediately: any turn you put cards into exile from graveyards or the battlefield, you draw and lose a life, and it pays out on the first pulse whether the exile zone holds one card or forty. That makes exile-based removal and graveyard hate double as a card-advantage engine the turn it lands, no threshold required. The seven-card gate governs only combat. Until seven or more cards sit in exile, this 4/4 with menace, lifelink, and indestructibility cannot attack or block; it is a permanent that draws you cards but sits inert on the crackback. That is the throttle that pays for the rate, because a three-mana indestructible lifelinker with menace would be absurd if it could swing on curve. The elegance is that the same actions feed both clocks: every exile trigger nudges you toward the seven-card unlock while banking a card along the way, so filling the exile zone to switch the attacker on and drawing your way there are one project rather than two. The trigger's design is deliberately broad in source (graveyards and battlefield both count) and narrow in timing (your turn only), which rewards stacking exile effects you were already inclined to run rather than assembling a dedicated combo. Once the gate opens, indestructibility means damage and destruction stop mattering, though exile, bounce, and sacrifice still answer it; the only lock left is the seven cards.