Leering Gargoyle

Tap the gargoyle and it stops being a 2/2 flyer: it becomes a 0/4 grounded body for the turn, trading the two power it was not using on defense for the toughness to absorb a bigger attacker. The toggle is the whole point, and the sequencing is what makes it honest. Because the swell lasts only through the current turn and the ability taps the creature, you cannot pre-activate to wait out an attack; you declare the gargoyle as a blocker, then tap to inflate its toughness before combat damage resolves. The wall mode is therefore reactive and single-use, committing the body for the turn rather than handing you free flexibility. The loss of flying is mostly cosmetic in practice: blockers are declared before the ability is activated, so the gargoyle can intercept another flyer and then become a 0/4 without leaving combat, since stripping an evasion keyword after blocks are locked in does not undo the block. And because tapping is part of the cost, the ability can never be used on offense at all: a tapped creature cannot attack, so the flying clause never grounds your own threat. This kind of stat-shifting toggle was a recurring mid-90s white-blue idea, a way to give a small evasive creature a second mode without printing a second card. The raw numbers are modest by modern standards; the interesting part is the structure, one body choosing each turn between flying offense and grounded defense, an early attempt to load a genuine tactical decision onto a single small creature.