Pursued Whale

The finisher that pays your opponents to attack you. An 8/8 for seven is a fair top-end body, but the design does something stranger: it hands each opponent a Pirate token and, through that token's static text, compels every creature they control to attack each combat if able. You are trading incidental chip damage for control of the enemy's combat step, turning would-be blockers into forced attackers and clearing the ground for a swing back. The Pirates cannot block, so they never actually defend the very board state they created. The second ability closes the other door: any spell an opponent casts to target the Whale costs three more, which prices out the cheap bounce and single-target removal that would otherwise erase seven mana of investment for two. Read together, the two abilities describe a specific kind of threat: not one that ends the game the turn it lands, but one that reshapes the terms of combat for as long as it stays on the battlefield, then survives the interaction meant to remove it. It is a political engine as much as a beater, most at home where multiple opponents each get their own forced-attack token and each has to decide whether to point that swing at you or at the player beside them.