Bristlebane Battler

A 6/6 with trample for two mana is a lie the card tells you up front, then charges you to make true. The five -1/-1 counters mean it enters as a 1/1, and every counter you shave off is bought with tempo you were spending anyway: each subsequent creature you deploy peels one back, so a wide, cheap board doesn't just develop, it inflates the thing at the top of the curve. The design logic is the inversion of the usual go-wide payoff. Most anthem or overrun effects reward the horizontal board with a burst at the end; this rewards it incrementally, counter by counter, and the reward is a single trampling body rather than a team buff. Ward is the piece that makes the growth worth defending: the moment it stops being a 1/1, an opponent has to overpay to interrupt the project, and by the fifth trigger it's a 6/6 that costs a spell-and-a-half to touch. The tension the card resolves is that a two-mana 6/6 has to be gated somehow, and gating it behind your own subsequent development means the payoff and the deckbuilding cost are the same action. It never asks for a dedicated engine, only that you keep casting creatures, which is what a creature deck was going to do regardless.