Lurebound Scarecrow

The leash is the whole transaction here. Name a color when it enters, and from that point the oversized body is mortgaged against your board presence in that color: control nothing of the named color and the Scarecrow walks itself off the table. It inverts the usual artifact pitch. Most colorless bodies sell themselves as deck-agnostic, asking nothing of your manabase; this one demands you actually be playing the color you chose and keep playing it, or the discount evaporates. The Scarecrow type is the tell. This comes from a color-matters era when being colorless was framed not as freedom but as a privilege your real colors had to grant. The sacrifice clause is generous in its timing (it only checks when you control no permanents of the named color, not when that permanent is merely tapped or threatened), but it turns unforgiving against a board wipe: a single sweeper can clip your last named-color permanent and this body in the same beat, since the trigger fires the instant the count hits zero. Think of it as a deliberate counterweight to colorless flexibility: you get the big stats up front, and the bill comes due the moment your chosen color stops showing up.