Rampaging Ceratops
Menace asks for two blockers, a tax most boards can pay by pairing off a couple of spare bodies. Demanding three rewrites the arithmetic: a defender has to sink a full quarter of a normal battlefield into stopping one attacker, and against most non-token boards those three creatures simply do not exist to spare. The 5/4 body then functions less like a beater and more like a lane-clearing threat, connecting for five while the rest of the swing walks through unopposed. The one board that can afford the tax is the go-wide token deck: a swarm of 1/1s is precisely the position with three expendable blockers to throw under it, trading chaff for a five-drop and coming out ahead. So the card is sharpest against midrange and control boards built of a few large creatures, and dullest against the wide swarms it looks like it should punish. The four toughness is the counterweight: it dies to the removal and combat tricks a defender was already holding, and the unblockable-except-by-three clause does nothing once the creature is dead. This is a finisher tuned for the swing turn rather than a repeatable engine, doing all its work in the combat step it attacks and asking for no build-around commitment beyond casting it.

