Boot Nipper

The counter choice is the whole design here: two mana buys either a 2/1 that trades up in combat or a 2/1 that swings your life total, decided the moment it enters and never after. That flexibility is a common-rarity take on modal creatures, where earlier designs paid for the choice through kicker or an alternative cost; putting the decision on an enter-the-battlefield counter instead makes the body itself the thing that changes, not an attached rider. The deathtouch mode reframes a fragile 2/1 as a deterrent: nothing wants to attack or block into it, because it kills whatever it touches even as it dies, so it functions as a one-for-one that eats something far larger than its own stats. The lifelink mode is the aggressive line, converting each point of combat damage into life to outrace a faster clock or claw back a losing race. Because the choice locks on entry, the card asks you to read the board before you commit rather than reconfiguring later, a cleaner and less powerful version of true modality with no flexibility once it resolves. It is a workmanlike two-drop built to fill a slot in a black creature curve, and the interest is in how little text it needs to give a common beast two genuinely different jobs: one defensive and punishing, one aggressive and self-sustaining, both priced at the same two mana.