Bitterblade Warrior

Exert was built to make attacking a recurring decision rather than a free swing, and this green two-drop is one of its most focused uses: on any attack you choose, you spend its next untap step to turn a 2/2 into a 3/2 with deathtouch until end of turn. The math underneath is the whole appeal. A deathtouch body eats whatever it touches, so a small creature suddenly polices the ground against blockers many times its size, and the attacking player wins the trade rather than trading evenly. What you surrender is a turn of board presence: the creature sits tapped through your next untap and can neither attack nor block, so you weigh whether forcing a favorable exchange now is worth going a beat down on defense. That calculus shifts with the deck around it. In a pressure shell the downside rarely bites, because you wanted the creature swinging anyway; in a grindier build, the missed untap step is a real hole. The wrinkle that sharpens the whole thing is when the choice locks in. You exert as the creature is declared as an attacker, before blocks, so you are committing to the deathtouch swing on a prediction about what the opponent will put in front of it, not a reaction to it. That forward read is what elevates a plain beater into a repeatable removal threat the attacker has to keep earning, guess by guess.