Gang of Elk

Blocking it is the trap, but only the wrong kind of block. The math punishes trading: throw a single creature in front and the 5/4 body swells to a 7/6; gang up with three blockers and it becomes an 11/10 that can outmuscle the wall and threaten everything that touched it. The design inverts the usual logic of the gang-block, where multiple defenders are supposed to overwhelm a lone attacker. Here, every additional blocker feeds the creature it was meant to stop, so a defender who wants to kill it has to commit bodies the swell will then eat. That puts the decision squarely on the opponent and leaves the attacker with a threat the board cannot profitably trade into. The trick has a clean ceiling, though, and the missing keywords define it. With no trample printed, the trigger does nothing to a chump-block: a lone 1/1 still soaks the entire hit no matter how large the Elk becomes, since none of the swollen damage tramples through. The swell matters only when the defender is trying to win the combat rather than survive it. So the card does not tax chump-blocking; it taxes the ambition to actually remove the creature. The trigger also fires only when it becomes blocked, so declining altogether means the 5/4 connects for its printed stats and nothing more. It is a body that punishes the defender for wanting more than to stall.