Thraben Gargoyle // Stonewing Antagonizer

A wall that flips into a flyer is one of the oldest tricks for selling a defensive body to an aggressive deck, and this one runs the trade the hard way. For a single mana you get a 2/2 with defender: a cheap blocker that stops early ground pressure while contributing nothing on offense. Waking it up costs six, and that gap between the deployment price and the activation price is the whole design tension. You pay one mana now for the brick and bank the rest, or you eventually sink the full six to swap defender for flying and turn a stationary roadblock into evasive damage. The early game wants the cheap wall, the late game wants the threat, and the card lets the same permanent be both as long as you can afford the conversion. The transform is one-directional and driven by your own mana rather than any external trigger, so the decision sits entirely with you: no daybound cadence, no combat condition, just whether you can spare six. It is the gargoyle template at its most literal, stone until you spend enough to wake it, with the offensive mode deliberately back-loaded so it never comes free.