Mishra, Lost to Phyrexia
Modality is usually a way to make a card flexible without making it oppressive: you pick one line, and the others become options you left on the table. This one inverts the deal. Choose three of six, on entry and again on every attack, and the arithmetic stops being "which mode" and becomes "which three, in what order, against what." Discard two, three damage anywhere, artifact or planeswalker removal, an anthem of menace and trample, a mass -1/-1 shrink, and two Powerstones to keep the mana flowing: any three of those clears a path, disrupts a hand, and refuels in a single trigger. The entry trigger is the part that makes the cost defensible, because it guarantees all three modes the moment the card resolves, before a single point of combat damage: it pays for itself on the way down. The 9/9 is not the payoff; it is the delivery mechanism, a frame heavy enough that the modes are what you are actually paying for. Attacking simply re-triggers the whole choice, so a body that survives one combat has already fired twice, and it rarely repeats the same three turn to turn. The design lets the card scale from a control finisher to a sacrificial engine to a board-clearing beater depending on the three lines you keep reaching for, doing several jobs at once rather than one job flexibly.
