Beetle-Headed Merchants

Attack triggers that convert a creature into card advantage are common; the ones that also grow the attacker are the more dangerous version, because they turn a sacrifice engine into a clock. The wrinkle here is timing: the payoff is stapled to the attack step itself, not to entry or upkeep, and it fires the moment you declare the attack, before blockers are even chosen. That distinction matters. You get to eat a token, draw, and add a counter regardless of whether the swing gets through, which frees you to send it into a bad attack purely for the value and lets the growth accrue even against a wall of blockers. The 5/4 frame is already ahead of the curve for a creature that wants to be attacking, so the counter is not propping up a soft stat line; it is compounding a real threat into something a defender has to answer before it snowballs out of removal range. The self-restriction is the fuel cost: you spend a permanent every time you want to fire it, so the card is only as good as the fodder around it. Without expendable tokens, aristocrats bodies, or throwaway artifacts, it is just a beater. Give it a board to feed on and it becomes an attrition engine that pays you to keep declaring attacks, drawing you through any resource war while it climbs.