Loch Mare

A 4/5 at this rate is a body that should not exist, so the design charges you the difference in counters and lets you decide when to pay it. The three -1/-1 counters are not a static drawback: they drop the creature to a 1/2 the instant it lands, and every point of stats above that is something you buy back one counter at a time. That inversion is the wrinkle. Each counter you strip off is a live choice between two conversions: spend one to draw, and the body grows a step while your hand refills; spend two to tap and stun a blocker or attacker, and the body grows two steps while you buy a turn of tempo. The counters function as a private clock the pilot controls, and the creature's eventual size is the residue of how you chose to cash them out. Left alone it is a 1/2 that draws or locks down at instant speed; wrung dry it becomes the full 4/5 the mana promised, but only after it has stopped being an engine. The tension is deliberate: the card is at its best as a value node and at its best as a threat at opposite ends of the same lifespan, and it cannot be both at once. The pilot is not building around a drawback so much as spending a threat down into cards, or hoarding cards up into a threat.