Maga, Traitor to Mortals
Pay X, name a player, and watch them shed exactly that much life: the X you spend becomes counters, and because the enters trigger counts the counters already on Maga, that same number lands on the target. The "enters with" wording is the load-bearing detail. This is a replacement effect, so Maga never sits on the battlefield as a fragile 0/0 begging to be destroyed; it arrives already loaded, the counters in place before any state-based check could touch it, and the life-loss trigger counts those counters when it resolves. This is X-spell reach recast as a permanent. The classic black mana sinks of the era were one-shot effects that left nothing behind; Maga converts a flood of mana into a single lethal figure and then stays as a Wizard carrying every counter, ready to grow under anthem effects or get fed to a sacrifice outlet after it has already taken a chunk out of a face. One distinction worth keeping straight: the trigger causes life loss, not drain. It does not refill you, so this is reach pointed outward, a finisher rather than a stabilizer. The targeting is open, but the practical use is plain: dump the mana, name the player you want dead, and let the counter math do the rest.
