Descendant of Storms

Endure is a modal payment stapled to the attack step, and the interesting part is that the choice actually shifts with the board rather than defaulting one way. Falling behind, you pump: put the counter on and push the two-power body harder in a race. Ahead or grinding, you take the token, turning a single attack into a widening board that feeds anything hungry for bodies and hedges against spot removal, since a lone kill spell no longer erases the mana you sank into the counter version. That split is the whole reason the keyword exists, and it lands on the body where it matters most: a one-drop that would otherwise stop mattering the moment the game slows down. The extra mana reads as a real tax when it competes with your curve early and a trivial one once you have lands to spare, which is exactly the shape you want from a scaling threat. The design sits in white's long tradition of cheap creatures that stay relevant into the midgame, but the modal payment separates it from a flat anthem target or a vanilla two-power one-drop: it hands you a decision worth making on turn six without ever asking for a second card to matter. A board wipe still catches everything here, tokens included; the payoff is not resilience so much as relevance, a threat that keeps generating value out of nothing but its own combat trigger.