Branchblight Stalker

Poison counters got a fixed rate again, and this two-drop sits at the aggressive end of that math: a 3/1 that plants two counters per connection means an unblocked swing on turn three has already pushed the opponent a fifth of the way to a poison loss. The body is deliberately brittle, one toughness against three power, because the plan is to trade into the red zone rather than survive it. Toxic revives the old infect tension while sidestepping the scaling problem that made infect a design headache: infect creatures dealt poison equal to combat damage, so a single Giant Growth could be lethal on the spot. Toxic decouples the poison from the damage, fixing the tick at two no matter how large the creature swings. Pumping this only makes it hit harder for regular life; the poison count stays put. That correction is what lets a toxic creature share a board with ordinary ones without turning every combat trick into a kill spell, and it keeps the poison clock legible for both players. What is left is a cheap pressure piece built to force the opponent to answer poison as a second axis running alongside their life total. Note the edge of that math, though. With no trample here, a chump block stops the poison entirely; two counters land only on connection, and because poison counters are permanent, a block never claws back the counters already stuck: it simply denies the two new ones, buying a turn rather than undoing progress.