Treacherous Werewolf
Threshold made plenty of cards better; here it makes the body actively worse to hold. Once seven cards fill the graveyard, the 2/2 swells to a 4/4, and that upgrade comes stapled to a death trigger that bills you four life. Most threshold designs in the era were pure upside: Mongrel-style beaters, cantrips that scaled, removal that improved. Black got the version with a hangover. The result is a creature whose strength curve and its liability curve point the same direction: the deck that turns this on is the deck most likely to be racing, attrition-warring, or sitting at a life total it cannot spare four from. There is a clean design logic underneath it, the same one that prices Phyrexian-style benefits against your own resources: a 4/4 for three mana is a deal, so the deck pays for the deal precisely when the 4/4 stops being a 4/4. You cannot dial the drawback off, either; the threshold that grows the body is the same threshold that arms the death clause, so there is no window where you get the size without the bill. It is a small, honest piece of black's "everything has a cost" worldview, built when threshold was the chassis used to ask what an aggressive graveyard deck was willing to risk.
