Molting Harpy

A 2/1 flyer for a single black mana reads like aggressive curve-filler until the upkeep bill arrives: every turn it survives, you owe two mana or you lose it. That recurring rent is what pays for the cheap evasive body, and it runs the aggro clock backwards. The creature wants to attack early and hit hard, but the longer the game lasts, the more the upkeep cost competes for the exact mana you would rather spend on threats and removal. The card is built for a short game; the tax penalizes you for letting it run long. The cleanest way to use it is as a disposable evasive beater: swing for a few turns and let it die the moment two mana is better deployed elsewhere, rather than feeding the tax out of stubbornness. It belongs to that late-1990s lineage of cheap creatures whose drawbacks were a genuine cost rather than a flavor note, from a period before small bodies were routinely handed pure upside. The Harpy Mercenary type ties it to a mercenary subtheme, but mechanically it stands alone: a fragile, flying clock whose meter never stops.