Whiplash, Vengeful Engineer

Swinging naked does nothing, and that empty attack is the whole tension of the design: the drain lives on the combat trigger, not on the equip step, so every point of life-swing is paid for in setup rather than handed over the moment steel connects. The clause scales with the number of Equipment attached, which makes this a Voltron shell wearing a one-drop's clothes: a 2/2 that enters tapped and demands mana before it accomplishes anything, then rewards you for loading the body and pushing it into the red zone. Putting the payoff on the attack trigger rather than on damage dealt is the sharp decision here, because it detaches the life-swing from combat's arithmetic entirely. The trigger fires before blockers are declared, so the drain resolves whether or not a single point of damage ever connects: chump-blocking the body does nothing to stop X life from leaving your opponent's total. That timing turns the equipped attack into a guaranteed reach engine, punishing an opponent who wants to trade the body away in combat rather than answer it at instant speed before you swing. And because the trigger drains and gains in equal measure, the clock runs in both directions at once: opponents fall by X while you climb by X. It is a lifegain-aggro anchor built on the gap between a cheap, exposed entry and a snowballing swing that only exists once the board is fully outfitted.