Perforating Artist

The end-step tax is the real work here, and it is punitive precisely because it hands the choice to the defender and still costs them. Three life is a genuine clock, but the opponent picks the exit: eat the loss, pitch a card, or sacrifice a nonland permanent of their choosing. None of the options is free, and stacking the tax turn after turn grinds a hand and a board down from three angles at once. The elegant part is where the raid clause sits: it triggers off any attacker, not this creature specifically, so the Artist can stay home as a deathtouch blocker while a spare token or expendable body goes in to unlock the drain. That decoupling is what makes the trigger reliable, since the payoff no longer depends on the three-drop surviving a combat step it never has to enter. Deathtouch turns the body into a defensive tax of its own: a 3/2 that trades up against anything the opponent sends at it, discouraging the profitable block that might otherwise remove the recurring drain at its source. Killing the Artist is still the cleanest way to shut off the engine, and deathtouch makes that removal cost more than the defender wants to pay in combat. It is a small attrition machine folded into a single three-drop, and every line it offers the opponent (block into deathtouch, take the loss, pitch, or sacrifice) is one they would rather not choose.