Abattoir Ghoul

The first-strike clause and the lifegain clause are wired together, and the wiring is the whole point of the design. Because the damage lands before a blocker or attacker can swing back, the ghoul cleans up small creatures in the first-strike step, and the death it just caused is what funds the life payment. The trigger keys off the dead creature's toughness, not the damage dealt, so finishing off a 1/3 returns three life even though only the third point was what killed it. That coupling makes it a defensive body that punishes attacking into it as readily as it rewards swinging out: anything that trades into the first-strike damage and dies feeds you, no matter which player declared the attack. Note the gating clause carefully: it does not gain life when it merely deals damage, the creature has to actually die that turn, which ties every payout to a threat genuinely removed from the board rather than just bloodied. The 3 power is the ceiling on what it can kill outright, and the 2 toughness is the tax that pays for the rest: almost any burn spell or removal answers it before it can grind, and a creature with more toughness survives the first-strike hit and swings back at full strength. What you get for that fragility is a combatant that turns each early exchange into a small life swing, leaning on the bookkeeping of who dealt damage to whom and when.