Bloodcrazed Paladin
The counter clause is a replacement effect, not an enters-the-battlefield trigger, and that gap is where the whole card lives. Because the size is baked in as the creature enters rather than added afterward, there is no window for an opponent to respond to a small body: whatever this is when it resolves, it stays. Flash is the second half of the mechanism, letting you hold the card until the dying is done and drop it into the aftermath at instant speed. Cast into an empty board it enters as a 1/1, since nothing has died to feed it, and that is the punishment for casting it early: a 1/1 for two mana with no counters to show for it. Held instead, it inverts the usual graveyard payoff. Most such cards care about the running total in your yard; this one counts only creatures that died this turn and nothing before. A four-body combat exchange leaves it a 5/5, a sweeper leaves it larger, and once those counters are on they are permanent, immune to the attrition that follows. The card asks for patience and a stomach for letting the board burn: wait for the wipe, the red-zone brawl, or the sacrifice engine to fire, then cash in on the wreckage. Fired at the right moment it is a threat no subsequent trade can shrink; fired at the wrong one it is a one-drop's body on a two-drop's cost.
