Sarkhan the Mad
The portrait of a man losing his mind, rendered in loyalty math. The plus that isn't a plus reveals your top card and burns Sarkhan for its mana value, so the only ability that doesn't tick down can still gut his loyalty in a single activation if you flip something expensive: a card-advantage engine that actively dismantles the planeswalker fueling it. The starting loyalty of 7 reads less like a defensive cushion and more like a fuse. The minus-two is the wrinkle that makes the design hum: it forces a chosen creature's controller to sacrifice it and replace it with a 5/5 flying Dragon, and because the target is any creature, the natural line is to point it at your own expendable body and trade a token or a spent attacker up into a Dragon you keep. Pointing it at an opponent's threat is the secondary use, accepting that they get a Dragon back. Either way it builds toward the ultimate, which has each Dragon you control deal its power in damage to a player or planeswalker. The lore is that Sarkhan was driven mad by the silence of the dragons he worshipped, and the abilities dramatize exactly that obsession: a man who manufactures Dragons, wounds himself drawing toward more of them, and finds release only by hurling every one he commands at a single target. The chassis is a flavor argument first and a value engine well behind it.
