Phylactery Lich
An indestructible 5/5 for three mana should never reach print, so the design buys it back with a tether: the body lives only as long as you control a permanent bearing a phylactery counter. That clause turns a pure beatstick into a conditional one, and the condition is the whole game. Remove the last such permanent and the Lich sacrifices itself, sidestepping the indestructibility entirely; opponents who never pack artifact removal watch a creature that shrugs off Doom Blade and Wrath of God alike run them over early. The counter also has to land on entry, so an empty board means a creature with no anchor and an immediate trip to the graveyard, which makes the deckbuilding demand blunt: bring artifacts or do not bring the Lich. The cleanest answer is the cheapest indestructible artifact you can stick first, which is why the card pulls toward equipment and mana rocks you would run anyway. It is a sharp lesson in how Magic prices indestructibility: not by raising the mana, but by attaching a single fragile dependency and letting the opponent decide whether they have the tool to break it.



