Basri's Lieutenant
The counter is the fuse, not the payoff. Most +1/+1-counter creatures reward you for keeping the counter on the board; this one is built to profit when a counter-bearing creature dies. Drop the incoming +1/+1 counter onto anything you already control, and the whole team becomes a chain of tokens waiting to fire: every counter-carrying body that dies to a block, a wrath, or a sacrifice replaces itself with a 2/2 vigilant Knight, which can then itself receive a counter and continue the loop. That inversion is what makes it resilient against exactly the removal it invites. Protection from multicolored narrows the shield to a pointed edge rather than a blanket: it dodges gold removal that targets and gold attackers or blockers in combat, but it is no answer to a multicolored board wipe like Supreme Verdict (which destroys without targeting), nor to an edict that forces you to sacrifice by pointing at the player rather than the creature. Vigilance keeps it attacking into the same board it is meant to hold, which matters when the death triggers reward trading in combat rather than sitting back. The result is a payoff that converts targeted removal and unfavorable blocks into token generation, priced as a creature that also happens to attack and defend on its own.
