Agent of Kotis

Renew is a graveyard mechanic dressed as a mana sink, and this Rogue is the clearest read on what the keyword is trying to buy. A 2/1 for two is a body you spend without regret in the early turns; once it dies, it stops being a creature and becomes a delayed counter engine, a one-shot exile activation that hands two +1/+1 counters to whatever needs them. The design logic is that the card gets to be two different things at two different points in the game without ever asking you to hold it in hand. The sorcery-speed restriction is what keeps the second mode from ambushing combat: you cannot leave the four mana up and blow out a block with a suddenly bigger blocker, so the counters have to be committed on your own turn, where the opponent can see them coming and plan around them. That places Renew squarely in the lineage of graveyard-value abilities that reward playing forward rather than reactively (flashback, unearth, disturb all live in the same neighborhood), but Renew's payoff is portable in a way those are not: the counters land on any creature, not the exiled card itself. The body dies, the value moves. It is a small card built around the idea that a dead two-drop should still owe you something later.