Ticking Gnomes

Echo was the Urza's-block experiment in selling a creature twice: you pay once to get it onto the battlefield, and then the game asks you, the following upkeep, whether you actually want to keep it. This card is that design at its most pointed, because the body and the payoff are wired to opposite ends of that decision. Keep it and you have a serviceable 3/3 that can be aimed for a point of damage at any time; let the echo lapse and you can still spend the sacrifice ability for that same point on the way out. The card is built so that not paying is rarely a clean loss: the activated ability lets you decide when the creature dies and what it kills, so the second payment becomes a genuine choice rather than a tax to grit through. The floor (three mana for a flexible point of reach attached to a real blocker) is acceptable, and the ceiling (a recurring deterrent that converts to damage the moment you let it go) is real. That sacrifice clause is what gives the card utility outliving its body. When the echo comes due, you decide whether its job is to keep blocking or to pop for value, and the timing of that pop is yours to set on the stack. A small card, but a clean teaching example of what echo was for and why its math so often resolved toward letting the creature go.