Rogue Skycaptain

A 3/4 flier for three mana is a genuine bargain in red, and the wage-counter clock is the bill for that discount. The cost is not fixed: it ramps. The first upkeep asks two mana, the next asks four, then six, and so on, because the payment scales with the accumulating counters rather than resetting. That escalation is the whole design. It buys you a powerful early body on the promise that you will either close the game before the mercenary's price outruns your mana, or hand it across the table when you cannot keep paying. The detail that makes this more than a Faustian beater is the failure clause: skipping the wage does not kill the creature or bounce it, it gives it to an opponent with its counters wiped clean, so they inherit a fresh 3/4 flier at a discount and you eat the tempo loss twice. That reframes the card from a removal-bait threat into a live trade your opponent might actually want to engineer. It belongs to Alliances' small family of mercenaries-for-hire, creatures whose flavor (loyalty bought, loyalty lost) is encoded directly in an upkeep cost that bleeds you out the longer you hold the lease. Pay or be betrayed, with the betrayal handing the blade to the other side.