Fresh-Faced Recruit

Conditional first strike that flips on the axis of who is doing the attacking: a 2/1 that wins combat the moment it swings and loses it the moment it has to block. The asymmetry is the whole design. A 2/1 with permanent first strike is a fine defensive body that trades up and holds a flank, but this one offers nothing on defense, so the rules text is also a behavioral nudge. It rewards keeping the creature pointed forward and punishes the player who tries to turtle behind it. That makes it cleaner in the throttle-open decks that want to be racing anyway: while you are on the offense, a 2/1 becomes a 2/1 that beats the 2/2 it runs into and survives the trade with a 3/1, and the body still dies to anything once the turn passes back. The hybrid cost does the rest of the work, letting the card slot into either aggressive color without splashing, which is exactly where a two-drop beater that only matters on the attack wants to live. It is a small card built on a precise insight: first strike is overwhelmingly an attacking ability, and a creature that only ever uses it on offense can be costed like the cheaper thing it nearly is.