Earth Village Ruffians

Aggressive bodies with one toughness usually resent trading: they hit hard, then fall to any spot removal or a chump block, and the tempo bill comes due immediately. This one flips that math by converting its own death into a resource. Earthbend 2 fires on death, so blocking it, burning it, or sacrificing it all funnel into the same payoff: one of your lands animates into a hasty 2/2 that still taps for mana. The 3/1 frame is the pressure phase; the earthbend trigger is the consolation that says trading down is fine because the death was always part of the plan. The recursion clause is where the design shows its restraint. When that animated land is removed, it comes back tapped, but it returns as an ordinary land: the +1/+1 counters and the creature body evaporate. The generosity runs one direction only. You get a one-shot beater bolted onto a mana source, and the land itself survives the exchange to keep producing, but you never inherit a recurring 2/2 to replay. Each earthbend is a single investment, not a loop. As a creature built to die and pay you for it, it sits in the aristocrats-adjacent tradition of bodies that turn their own removal into board presence, with the wrinkle that the payoff animates a permanent already sitting safely in your mana base rather than committing a fresh card to the fight.