Valakut Invoker

The number is the whole story: an activated ability priced so steeply it works less as a repeatable removal engine than as a promise that, if the game drags on and your lands keep arriving, this Shaman eventually starts throwing bolts. The design idea is old and honest: a manabase that has run out of things to draw into should have somewhere to dump the surplus, and eight-mana pings turn that surplus into reach. The friction is intentional. Eight mana is multiple turns of damage even in a mana-flooded hand, and the 3-damage output never scales, so each activation is a fixed return against an escalating investment. As a 2/3, the body blocks early and finishes only once nothing else is happening, and even then it clocks at three points a turn cycle. The ceiling lives entirely in the late game's dead air; on curve it does nothing remarkable, and it asks only that you keep it alive long enough for the sink to start mattering. The lineage runs back to the high-cost rods and relics that converted excess lands into damage, every "spend eight, deal three" outlet that gave a topped-out hand a use for its mana. What distinguishes this iteration is narrow but real: the engine arrives attached to a creature, which means it can also just stand in the way while you wait for the mana to pile up.