Phobian Phantasm

Two evasion abilities stacked on one body, and the upkeep tax that pays for both: fear already makes a 3/3 hard to block outside of artifacts and black creatures, and flying piles a redundant lane on top, so the clock here is meant to be all but unanswerable once it lands. What keeps that unanswerable clock honest is its shelf life. Cumulative upkeep ratchets the black-mana cost up every turn an age counter accrues, and because the body comes down with summoning sickness, the math compounds fast: the first swing happens with one age counter on it (paying one), the second with two counters (paying two), and by the fourth swing you are paying four mana just to keep it on the battlefield, on top of whatever you wanted to do that turn. This is the era's signature self-limiting clock: a beater that hits hard and early, then forces you to choose between feeding it and developing anything else. The design front-loads the value, hands you a tight window of evasive damage, and prices the late game so steeply that letting the creature go is the intended outcome rather than winning a mana war you cannot afford. It favors a deck that has already done its damage by the time the counters pile up, and punishes the player who treats it as a permanent fixture. The doubled evasion is the lure; the climbing tax is the reason the lure does not break anything.