Dragon Egg

A wall that promises a payoff: the 0/2 body with Defender exists only to hold ground long enough for something to kill it, and the death trigger is the whole transaction. What hatches is not just a flier but a mana sink, a 2/2 Dragon with flying and a repeatable firebreathing pump that scales with whatever red you have spare in the late game. The design logic is patient. You are not paying three mana for a blocker; you are paying three mana to bank a creature, daring the opponent to either leave the egg alone (and let it stall) or spend removal on a zero-power wall (and hand you the upgrade). Sacrifice outlets short-circuit the wait entirely, turning the trade-up into a thing you control rather than something you hope the opponent triggers for you. This is the two-stage red creature in miniature, where the worse half is a placeholder and the better half is the reason to run it, the same shape that makes a flip-on-death body more than the sum of its printed stats. The Defender keyword is the tax that keeps the front end honest: you get the eventual dragon, but only after the egg has done nothing offensive on its own.