Avenging Hunter

The initiative reworked the monarch's design and gave it teeth: instead of a passive card-draw crown you defend, it hands you a dungeon-crawl that keeps rewarding you as long as the opponent cannot connect in combat. Most creatures that grant it on entry pay a premium for the value engine, undersizing the body to price in the effect. Not this one. Five mana buys a 5/4 with trample, a body that already wants to be swinging, attached to a mechanic you seize the moment your dragon rolls over a blocker. That alignment is the point. Where a fragile initiative-granter is a value payload you have to protect with other pieces, this creature is a threat first: its entry trigger grabs the initiative immediately, and its combat presence lets you claw it back if you lose it, since dealing combat damage to the initiative-holder wrests it away. The trade-off worth naming is the one it does not solve. Without vigilance, attacking taps it, so the turn you commit to the offense is the turn you leave yourself open to a swing that takes the initiative right back. That tension is the game the card sets up: a big trampler that both grants the initiative on arrival and offers a path to reclaim it through combat, but never quite guarantees you keep it. Two jobs, the clock and the crown, collapsed into one body that points them the same direction.