Defiant Greatmaw

Both of this Hippo's abilities point inward, at your own side of the board: the enter trigger drops two -1/-1 counters onto a creature you designate, and the second ability shuttles a counter off some other creature of yours whenever the Greatmaw itself absorbs one. Read in isolation that looks like a downside, three mana for a 4/5 that immediately punches a hole in your own line. The design only makes sense as the workhorse of a -1/-1 counter engine, where those counters are not damage but a resource to be moved. Drop the two onto a body whose death or shrink you want to trigger (a sacrifice payoff, a creature with a counter-cares ability, something you plan to remove counters from later), then let the Greatmaw act as a relay: when counters land on it, one gets pulled back off another creature you have. It is a shuttle, not a removal spell. Counters flow in, counters flow out, and the sturdy frame keeps the Hippo relevant while it moves them around. What balances it is that both halves target only your own creatures, so it can never simply shrink an opposing blocker; the wither-style counters stay locked inside your ecosystem. That insularity is the whole point. A green beater that wants to be hit with shrinking effects is an unusual axis, and the Greatmaw exists to turn what is normally a drawback into throughput for a deck built to recycle the same handful of counters across bodies.