Boom Scholar

Exhaust as a keyword is built around scarcity: each ability fires once per game, which forces the mana cost to shoulder the whole design. Most exhaust bodies are one-shot bombs you pay full price for and then leave as an ordinary creature. This one attacks the math from the other side. Its static ability turns every other exhaust permanent you control into a discount engine, shaving off each one-time activation, which means a board of costly single-use effects suddenly reads like a hand of premium spells you can afford in a single turn. Its own exhaust ability is both the payoff and the tell: a team-wide trample grant that closes out a wide board while stacking two +1/+1 counters on the 3/3 body as it fires. The mechanic's biggest weakness is that a fixed roster of once-only activations tends to sit uncastable when the mana is tight; reduce every one of those activations by a flat amount and the whole subtheme tips from a slow value grind toward an explosive turn where several one-shots resolve at once. That makes this less a standalone payoff and more the enabler the keyword needs to function as an engine rather than a collection of expensive novelties. The trample-and-grow line is almost incidental; the real work happens before it ever activates, in the cost of everything else on the board.