Carrion Rats

A 2/1 for one black mana reads as a premium aggressive one-drop, but the body comes with an off switch handed to the entire table. Whenever it attacks or blocks, any player (not just an opponent, any player) may exile a card from their own graveyard to make the rat deal no combat damage that turn. The exile cost falls on whoever wants to defuse it, drawn from that player's own graveyard, so the price of neutering a swing is paid by the defender, not extracted from the attacker. That distinction matters: this is not a card that taxes your graveyard, but one whose 2 power can be voluntarily nullified by anyone willing to spend a card from theirs. The effect is symmetrical and entirely opt-in: when you attack, the defender can pay to take no damage; when you block with it, the attacking player can pay to push their creature through, since the trigger only stops the rat's damage, not the combat itself. The 1 toughness keeps it fragile regardless, so even unspoiled damage trades down against most blockers. The design's real curiosity is treating graveyard cards as a spendable resource, exiled to alter a combat outcome rather than to fuel something. The idea would resurface later in cleaner, more directed forms; here it sits raw and unpriced, an early sketch of a mechanic the game had not yet figured out how to balance.