Baron Strucker, HYDRA Overlord

Connive is the load-bearing keyword here, and it does two jobs at once that most tribal payoffs keep separate. The first is card selection: every Villain that follows this one loots a card, letting a deck built around expendable bodies dig toward its threats or ditch dead lands without netting cards outright. The second is a growth engine, but a conditional one; the +1/+1 counter lands only when the discarded card is a nonland, which quietly rewards a curve dense enough that you're pitching spells rather than flooding out. Pair that filtering with a broad cost cut across the whole Villain type, and the card wants a critical mass of tribe members deployed rapidly, then sifted and, when the hand cooperates, grown on the following turns. The self-imposed once-per-turn limiter is what keeps it from spiraling: it caps the connive to a single trigger no matter how many Villains swarm in on one turn, so the ceiling is steady rather than explosive. That restraint is the design tell. A tribal lord that discounts and draws would ordinarily be a combo enabler; the once-each-turn clause pins it to a fair, grinding plan instead, where each turn adds one card looked at and, if you had a nonland to burn, one counter placed. It's a payoff built for a deck that goes wide slowly, not one that goes off.