Adventurous Eater // Have a Bite
Prepared is the mechanic that folds a stored spell into a creature's arrival: the body enters already carrying a copy of the sorcery on its back half, and casting that copy consumes the reserve. This is one of its plainest studies. A 3/2 that also, at your option, banks a small pump-and-lifegain, where the decision that matters is when you cash it in. Because Have a Bite is a sorcery, the stored mode is not a held-up combat trick; it is a proactive plan you commit to on your own turn, either now for immediate board impact or later once you have a creature worth the +1/+1 counter. The quieter design note is the color. Permanent counters paired with lifegain has long been Selesnya's beat, and routing even a modest version of it through a mono-black warlock nudges the mechanic into space it rarely occupies. Both halves are deliberately small: three power on the body, a lone counter and a single point of life on the spell. That restraint reads as intentional, since the payoff of Prepared is optionality across turns rather than raw efficiency in any one. The counter is permanent, so it survives combat and pushes a marginal attacker or blocker over the top; the life is incidental. It is a card about holding a cheap choice and picking the turn to spend it, not about the ceiling of any single line.
