Brightblade Stoat

Two mana buys first strike and lifelink on the same 2/2, and the interaction between those two keywords is the whole pitch. First strike lets this weasel deal its 2 combat damage before an equal-sized opponent connects, so it wins the mirror against a vanilla 2/2 and dies only to bodies that survive its 2 first-strike damage and hit back for 2 or more in the normal damage step. Lifelink means every hit it lands refunds 2 life, which is where the card earns its keep. In the red zone it doubles as a soft attrition piece: a blocker that cannot survive 2 damage dies in the first strike step without ever landing its blow, and either way you bank the life while your opponent does not. The stacking is white doing its oldest job. First strike as a defensive posture and lifelink as a grind tool have long been the color's tools for winning on the margins rather than racing, and putting both on a cheap creature is the concentrated form of that idea: a two-drop the opponent has to fight over rather than freely trade with. Nothing here is flashy, and the 2/2 base means a straight burn spell answers it cleanly before combat matters at all. But as an early drop that punishes careless blocking and drips life totals apart, it does the small, repeatable work a keyword-matters shell asks of its two-drops.