Ancestral Vengeance

For two black mana, this Aura bundles two effects that share nothing but a card slot: a static -1/-1 pinned to whatever it enchants, and a +1/+1 counter dropped on a creature you control. Point the minus at a one-toughness body and it plays as removal that hands you a counter on the side, a tempo swing black rarely buys at this rate. The independence of the two halves is the mechanical trick. The counter rides an enters-the-battlefield trigger rather than a casting cost, so an empty board never gates the spell: enchant and shrink an opposing creature with nothing of your own out, and the trigger finds no legal target and fizzles, but the -1/-1 lands and the kill resolves anyway. The counter is the half that goes idle, never the removal. The ceiling is toughness. On its own it answers nothing bigger than a one-toughness creature, though because the -1/-1 is a straightforward power-and-toughness modifier, it does pile up: a second copy, or any other minus effect stacked on the same body, drops toughness further and reaches larger creatures. Where it stretches past pure removal is in counter-matters shells, where the +1/+1 feeds proliferate engines and threshold payoffs as a rider on a card already earning its cost by killing something. The static minus is the reliable half; the counter is the bonus you collect when the board cooperates.