Lathnu Hellion

A 4/4 with haste for three mana would be a pushed body anywhere; the question is what you pay for it, and here the price is paid in a resource the card mints for itself. The energy economy is the whole mechanism: it walks in with exactly two counters, enough to survive one end step, and then demands two more every turn after to keep breathing. Left unsupported, it is a Ball Lightning that you get to keep slightly longer than usual, two beats of four damage before it sacrifices itself. The design's real intent shows when you treat that upkeep not as a tax but as a clock you control: a deck with other sources of energy can feed the Hellion indefinitely while spending the same counters on other payoffs, turning a self-destructing beater into a permanent threat whose survival is a deckbuilding question rather than a board-state one. That is the tension the card is built around. The sacrifice clause is not a downside bolted on to balance the rate; it is the meter that converts your energy reserves into board presence, and the rate looks generous precisely because it assumes you have nothing to spend. Hand it a working energy engine and the math inverts: the cheap, oversized body becomes the easy part, and the interesting decision becomes whether you would rather keep it alive or cash those counters elsewhere.