Craig Boone, Novac Guard
The counter mechanic here does something structurally unusual for a red-white attacker: instead of scaling by pumping its own body, the quest counters accumulate as a fixed damage battery that stays on the card between combats. Every multi-creature attack adds two, and because the counters never leave, each swing throws a bigger shock than the last. What sharpens it is the fork the trigger hands the opponent: it points at one of their creatures by default, and its controller then decides whether that creature eats the damage or takes it to their own face instead. That turns a piece of removal into a punishment they can only reroute, not refuse. Let the creature take it and they lose a body; redirect it to their life total to keep the blocker alive, and the damage still lands. Either way the counters keep climbing, so next combat the choice is worse. Lifelink is the quiet engine behind all of it: the damage comes from Craig Boone in both cases, so you gain that much life whichever branch the opponent picks, and the battery pays for the aggression that fuels it. Reach lets a 3/3 threaten fliers on a crowded board rather than getting pinned to the ground. The whole design rewards going wide, exactly the plane these two colors already want to occupy, and it punishes an opponent for answering only one of its modes. It is a burn engine wearing the frame of a combat creature, built to anchor the top of a tokens curve.
