Reclusive Artificer

A removal effect priced on a stat wholly separate from the body that carries it: this attacks the moment it lands, but the damage it deals scales with your artifact count, not with its 2/3 frame. That decoupling is the whole design tension. With no artifacts in play the enter trigger still resolves; it simply deals zero damage, leaving you a hasty two-power attacker with a dead ability. Stack the board with cheap artifacts first and the same trigger becomes a sweeping bolt that can clear a midrange threat the turn it arrives. Haste does double duty here, letting the creature pressure the board immediately while the artifact count it cares about is something you've likely been building toward for other reasons. The trigger fires once on entry, so unlike a repeatable pinger it wants the count ready at the exact moment it resolves rather than across a long game; there is no second chance to grow into it. It is artifact payoff dressed as a creature, the kind of conditional removal that overperforms in a hardware-heavy shell and does almost nothing outside one. The artificer type and the artifact-counting trigger are the same idea expressed twice: a body that only pays off when surrounded by the machinery it was built to count.