Cragplate Baloth

Green rarely gets to bundle protection and pressure into one body, and the design here is a study in how many premiums it takes to make hexproof on a creature feel fair. Seven mana buys a 6/6 that can't be answered by targeted removal, arrives ready to swing, and can't even be met on the stack by a counterspell. That last stipulation is the quiet ceiling-raiser: most fatties fold to a hard counter before they ever touch the battlefield, and stripping that answer away is what turns this from a beater into a genuine "resolve or lose the game" threat against control. The kicker is the release valve. Cast flat for the base cost, you get a resilient midrange body; pay the extra to grow it to a 10/10, and you close games in two swings from a creature the opponent can't target and can't counter. Green's answer to the classic protection-plus-evasion problem has usually been trample or sheer size rather than hexproof, so pairing untargetability with haste on a payoff this large is unusually aggressive for the color's toolkit. What keeps it in check is the mana: seven for the small version, ten for the kicked one, both sorcery-speed commitments that leave no room for a follow-up and stack neatly into the top of a ramp curve where the payoff cards are supposed to end conversations.