Gila Courser

The bargain here is aggression that refunds itself. A 4/2 for three attacks profitably into most defenses, but the brittle back half means it trades down the instant the board stalls; the impulse-draw trigger is what pays for that fragility, converting each swing into a card you can spend across two turns. The Saddle mechanic sets the tax: you need other creatures on the board with a point of power to spare, and you can only pay it at sorcery speed, so the card rewards a wide, forward-leaning shell that already wants to attack rather than a controlling one that would rather hold back blockers. That timing restriction carries real weight. You saddle in your first main phase, before combat, so the advantage is telegraphed and the defender knows the swing is coming. The card advantage has a distinctive shape, too: the exiled card must be played by the end of your next turn or it is lost, so the value is real but perishable, biased toward cheap spells and immediate development rather than banked resources. This is a design that wants tempo on both ends, a body that pressures now and a trigger that keeps the pressure funded, provided you keep swinging. Stop attacking and the engine goes cold.