Steel Exemplar

Most multicolor payoffs read the total color content of your spell and reward you for touching more of it. This one runs the check in reverse: pay the five generic cleanly, keeping the payment to a single color or none at all, and the body arrives with two +1/+1 counters as a 6/6 trampler; slip a second color into that payment and it settles at the printed 4/4. The counters are not something you earn but something you forfeit the moment a second color touches the cast, which inverts the usual logic entirely. Monochromatic decks and pure ramp shells are the intended beneficiaries here, while the two-color decks ordinarily flush with fixing pay a stat tax for their flexibility. Trample carries more weight than a keyword line suggests, because the counter clause is what turns this from a fair-sized filler creature into a genuine beater: a disciplined mana base buys a 6/6 that gets its damage through, and that payoff only lands if the extra size can actually push past a blocker. The design belongs to a small family of cards that gate power on the colors of mana you spend rather than the amount, treating your restraint as the thing being rewarded and using the check to shrink the reward for splashing rather than to enable it.