Pouncing Jaguar

Echo as a keyword tried to discount the front end of a creature's cost and bill you for the rest later, and this 2/2 Cat is the rate-curve test case for the whole idea. One green now buys a body that a bear gives you for two on the following turn anyway, but the splitting of that cost is the point: the first payment puts an immediate blocker or beater on the board, and the echo payment is the tax for having arrived ahead of curve. The friction lives in the timing. Echo only triggers on a creature that arrived since the start of your previous upkeep, so flickering it, bouncing it to hand, or reanimating it resets the clock and demands the green all over again. That same clause turned echo into a liability around blink and recursion rather than a way to dodge the cost, since each new entry re-arms the trigger. Most echo creatures of the era front-loaded a genuine discount and asked you to confirm the investment a turn later; this one sits closer to a fair-rate green one-drop with a deferred installment attached, the clean baseline against which the splashier echo designs read as exceptions.