Skeleton Ship

A repeatable -1/-1 counter machine bolted to a flavor leash that ties it to the open sea. Untap each turn, shrink a creature by one, and a 0/3 body that does nothing offensively quietly grinds an opposing board into nothing over enough turns. The clause that pays for the engine is the sacrifice condition, an early experiment in environmental keying that demands you keep an Island in play or lose the ship entirely. It is the rare downside written as flavor first: a skeleton ship cannot sail without the sea, so the moment your last Island leaves play the card disappears, no matter how much value it was generating. That clause also makes it fragile in a way pure rate never is; the body costs five mana and produces nothing the turn it lands, and it folds the instant land destruction or an awkward draw strips your blue sources. The -1/-1 counters themselves are permanent and stack, so the ship is most dangerous against creatures that planned to stick around: toughness it whittles does not come back, and over time it answers a board the way a slow saw answers a tree. A legendary creature built around attrition rather than tempo, keyed to its own color identity by a rule that reads like a sea-chantey.