Atlantean Skirmisher

Connive was built to solve a specific problem with self-improving attackers: how do you let a small creature grow and dig for gameplay pieces without handing the pilot a free card every combat? The answer is the discard clause, and this Merfolk is a clean expression of it. Attack, draw, discard: if the card you pitch is a nonland, the counter lands and the body climbs; if you dump a land, you still smoothed your draw but the creature stays put. That coupling is what keeps the mechanic honest without a house metaphor for it. A hand clogged with spells you would rather keep forces a real choice between the counter and your resources, while excess lands convert into filtering that leaves the attacker unchanged. At a 1/2 for two, it needs a couple of swings before the connive counters make it survive combat on its own, so it wants to attack early into an open board rather than trade. The Rogue-Merfolk typing lets it slot into either the tempo shells that lean on evasive card advantage or the blue creature-count decks that care about those tribes. Nothing here is flashy; connive is one of the more elegant ways to make a two-drop that improves the more you commit to attacking, and this is the vanilla-plus version of that template, doing the work without asking for a build-around.