Aven Archer

A repeatable two-damage ping that points only at creatures already committed to combat: this is a Prodigal Sorcerer rebuilt as a combat tax rather than a general engine. The targeting clause does all the balancing. The archer is inert the turn no one swings, and it cannot touch a threat that simply sits at home, so it is never a free clock or a removal toolbox. What it is instead is a deterrent: attacking into this board, or blocking against it, risks a two-damage jolt to the wrong creature, and the slow accumulation of those decisions is the whole point. This is attrition design from an era that prized incremental edges over raw tempo, the kind of repeatable answer a control deck deploys not to win outright but to talk the other player out of attacking at all. Flying matters here less as evasion than as a reminder that the bird would rather stay untapped: with no vigilance, swinging in spends the very tap the ability needs, so an archer that attacks this turn cannot police the next combat. The fragile 2/2 body sharpens the same tension, leaving its pilot to dictate when fights happen rather than wait for the board to come to it. The five-mana cost is the tax on all of this: a slow piece for a slow plan, asking patience in exchange for control of every combat that follows.