Ravaging Riftwurm

A 6/6 for three mana with a fuse already lit: vanishing prices that body by lending it back, and the counters start coming off the moment it lands. The math is the whole bargain. Two time counters and no haste means a single attack: it enters, the first upkeep strips a counter (now it can swing), and the second upkeep strips the last and sacrifices it before you ever reach combat again. One hit for three mana, then it evaporates. Kicker is the release valve for the patient: pay the additional cost and the creature arrives with five counters instead of two, stretching a borrowed beater into a threat that lingers across several turns. The wurm reads as two cards stapled together, a cheap burst of pressure or a committed midgame body, with no middle setting. The decision it forces is a sequencing one rather than a deckbuilding one: cast it now and accept the single swing, or hold for the kicker and sink four more mana into keeping it around. Vanishing was an early-era answer to green's standing problem of cheap fat that never pays its rent, and the deal reads cleanly here: the size is real, the discount is real, and the sacrifice trigger is the bill coming due on a schedule you can read off the counters every upkeep.