Blockade Runner

Self-evasion priced into the body itself: pay one blue and the 2/2 walks past any blocker, no enchantment slot or one-shot pump required. The design idea is the recurring tension Merfolk have always represented in blue: a tribe of small bodies whose whole pitch is that they connect, and whose mechanical vocabulary keeps circling unblockability as the reward. Here the keyword work is folded onto a single permanent with a repeatable activation, so the threat carries its own answer to defense across multiple turns rather than spending a card to clear one combat step. That repeatability is the friction point the rate has to absorb: four mana for a 2/2 reads soft, and the blue activation cost keeps the engine honest, since pushing through unblocked damage and developing the board the same turn taxes a tempo deck's mana every step of the way. The body performs the evasion-on-a-stick job blue beatdown leans on, the same structural work a pump-and-trample aura does in green, accomplished without the card disadvantage of attaching anything. It never closes a game quickly on its own; what it offers is a leak that cannot be plugged by going wider, a small damage source that ignores the one defensive plan most decks default to.