Covert Cutpurse // Covetous Geist

The removal comes with a string attached: it can only finish off a creature that has already been dealt damage this turn. That condition is the whole design problem, and the front face doesn't solve it alone. A 2/1 with no evasion, Covert Cutpurse wants a board where combat has already happened: an opponent's blocker that survived, a creature softened by an earlier attacker, anything wounded but not dead. Enter into that and the trigger cleans up. On an empty or undamaged board it's a fragile body with a fizzled ETB, the tax the effect pays for being cheap conditional removal rather than an unconditional kill spell. The back half is a different card entirely. Disturb lets Covetous Geist rise from the graveyard for five mana as a flying deathtouch threat, no destroy trigger attached: the recursion buys evasion and a blocker nobody wants to trade with, not a second removal spell. And the exile-on-death clause is what keeps disturb from becoming a loop. You get the second life once, then the card is gone for good. The design splits its value across two lives that don't overlap: pay full mana up front for conditional removal on a fragile body, or pay again later for an evasive attacker whose deathtouch makes every block a bad one. Neither half wants what the other offers, which is what makes casting the front face a live decision rather than a foregone step toward the better back.