Skeletal Wurm

Eight mana for a 7/6 is a body priced at the very top of any curve, and the repeatable regeneration is the only reason that price was ever defensible: a single black mana buys it back from combat, from removal that destroys, from a board wipe that deals damage. The math underneath is a trade between tempo and resilience. You are not paying for a fast threat; you are paying for one that refuses to leave. In an era where the biggest creatures came stapled to drawbacks or fragility, this leaned the other direction: an unremarkable rate on the way down, but functionally impossible to kill through ordinary attrition as long as you hold open mana. The Skeleton type and the bone-and-spine art make the regeneration read as flavor rather than a bolt-on ability, the wurm that keeps reassembling itself, but the strategic identity is purely defensive economics. It is a finisher for a deck willing to grind, the kind of top-end that wins not by hitting hard once but by being the last creature standing after both players have spent their answers. That it folds instantly to exile, bounce, sacrifice, or toughness reduction, the things regeneration never covered, is the wrinkle that always kept this honest at its size.