Pact of the Titan

The whole conceit of the Pact cycle is borrowing against next turn, and this is the one that buys a body instead of a spell. The token lands now for nothing; the bill comes due at your next upkeep, and a missed payment is not card disadvantage but a loss outright. That structure inverts the usual question about a 4/4: you are not asking whether the rate is fair, you are asking whether the turn you cast it on is worth more than the turn you have to pay five mana for it. Cast on an empty board it is a free beater that costs five mana spread across two turns and a real risk of death if your draw stalls; cast as a surprise blocker at the end of an opponent's attack, or as the last point of reach in a race, the free mana on the relevant turn is the entire pitch. The Giant is the plainest of the Pacts (no flying, no haste, no protection, just a large vanilla body), which makes it the cleanest demonstration of the mechanic's logic: the power is entirely in the timing of when zero mana is worth more than the you owe later. It is a tempo instrument disguised as a creature, and the lose-the-game clause is the only thing keeping a free 4/4 honest.