Death Baron
The lord that gave Zombie tribal its teeth. Most tribal anthems of its era handed out a flat stat bump and called it done: Lord of Atlantis pushed Merfolk, Goblin King swelled the horde, and the formula stopped at +1/+1 plus an evasion grant. This one adds deathtouch to the package, and that second clause is what reshaped how Zombie decks fight. A swarm of 1/1 tokens that each trade up into anything they touch turns every blocking decision and every alpha strike into a math problem the opponent loses; chump-blocking the small bodies stops being an option, and racing a board of deathtouch attackers is suicide. The deathtouch also extends to Skeletons, a quiet nod to two graveyard-leaning tribes that share black's space, though Zombies are where the work happens. Stacking two copies does not redundantly grant deathtouch (you only need it once) but the +1/+1 effects do pile up, so the redundancy lands on the stat line rather than the keyword. The body itself is fragile and the lord effect only matters with a board to amplify, which keeps it honest: it rewards the go-wide plan it was built to enable rather than functioning as a standalone threat. For years it was the card that separated Zombie decks that wanted to grind from Zombie decks that wanted to kill, and the deathtouch line is why anyone reached for it over a vanilla anthem.
