Phyrexian Prowler
Three fade counters are not a clock so much as ammunition. Left untouched they tick down to a sacrifice, but the activated ability lets you spend them early, each one trading a unit of remaining lifespan for +1/+1 until end of turn. The math is tighter than the 3/3 body suggests: it enters summoning-sick with three counters, and by the first turn it can attack the upkeep trigger has already pulled one, leaving two to burn for a 5/5 swing before the countdown ends it. That is the entire pitch. You are not buying a permanent for ; you are buying a fixed quantity of pressure and choosing the turn to cash it out. The cleverness lives in the friction between the two ways a counter can leave: every one you spend pumping is one the upkeep will never get to remove, so the creature's death and the size of its attacks draw from the same pool. Fading was an early-era answer to a problem that echo and cumulative upkeep kept circling, namely how to sell a discounted body and reclaim its cost later without the player feeling robbed. Most fading creatures of that generation buried the counters behind continuous effects and let them dwindle invisibly. This one hands you the detonator and trusts the arithmetic to do the talking.
