Blightbelly Rat

A death trigger that turns dying into progress is the reason this rat is worth building around, and toxic is the counter it advances. On offense, connecting for a single poison counter is a small increment; dying then proliferates it, along with every other counter already on the board. That reversal is the design logic: most aggressive one-poison creatures want to survive to keep chipping away, but this one is arguably happier trading in combat or feeding a sacrifice outlet, because the proliferate compounds what it already put on the opponent and stacks a second counter onto whatever else it left behind. It reads as pure downside insurance and functions as the opposite, converting the loss of a body into forward motion for a poison clock, planeswalker loyalty, or any counter engine running alongside it. The proliferate is not gated to poison: it will bump loyalty, +1/+1 counters, charge counters, whatever is on the field, which is what separates it from a two-drop that only cares about connecting. That inverts the usual attrition math. Removal spent on it still triggers the payoff, and blocking it hands you a proliferate you were going to get regardless. The rate is modest and the effect is incremental by design, but the whole appeal is that death is the intended outcome rather than the failure state.