Tellah, Great Sage
The spell-mana threshold is the real engine here, and it is a cleverer construction than the token-per-spell trigger it hides behind. Most spells-matter payoffs count how many noncreature spells you cast; this one grades how much you spent on each individual cast, turning every spell into a tiered slot machine that pays a body always, two cards at four mana, and a lethal detonation at eight. That last mode reframes the whole card: it stops being a value creature and becomes a sacrifice-fueled finisher whose damage scales with the single largest thing you can cast, dealt to each opponent rather than one target. The design leans hard on how total mana spent gets counted, so alternative costs, additional payments, and mana-value-inflating riders all push toward the thresholds, rewarding one expensive cast over a fast sequence of cheap ones. The 3/3 body is almost incidental; the payoff lives in a single turn where one big spell simultaneously refills the hand and converts Tellah himself into a bolt to the face. The self-sacrifice on the eight-mana trigger is what caps the ceiling: the explosion fires once and takes the body with it, so a deck built around him has to choose between the turn the game ends and the slower plan where he stays back drawing off four-mana spells. That fork, between the finisher and the value engine, is the actual deckbuilding question the card poses.
