Mishra, Claimed by Gix
The story is written into the meld condition itself: this Mishra is only ever half a card. Its attack trigger scales with your board, draining the table for the number of attackers and refilling you by the same count, which makes it a serviceable aggressive threat on its own terms. But the design is engineered around a partner it cannot cast, Phyrexian Dragon Engine, and the payoff for assembling both is not a static combine but a swing already in progress: when the two attack together under your ownership and control, they exile and meld into Mishra, Lost to Phyrexia, entering tapped and attacking. The timing on that final line is the clever part. Most meld payoffs assemble in a main phase and ask you to wait a full rotation before they can threaten anything; this one folds the transformation into the combat step, so the completed Mishra is committed to the attack the instant it exists, before opponents get a fresh untap to answer it. It captures the narrative beat it is named for, the moment Gix's corruption finishes its work and Mishra becomes something else entirely, by making the physical act of attacking the trigger for his own undoing. As a body, the 3/5 wants to endure and pressure rather than close games alone; the front half is patient by design, because the whole point is the version of Mishra you do not see on this side of the card.
