Glissa Sunslayer
First strike stacked on deathtouch is the oldest trick in the two-color midrange playbook: nothing your opponent can profitably block with, and nothing that can profitably block it. What separates this design from a decade of deathtouch beaters is that the combat damage trigger is a modal toolbox rather than a fixed reward. Connect once and you pick the answer the board actually needs: a card off the top at the cost of a life, targeted enchantment removal, or three counters peeled off any permanent. That last mode is the sleeper. Removing counters is a rare enough effect that it warps whole subgames on the fly: a planeswalker's loyalty, a growing creature's +1/+1 pile, a Saga's chapter progression, an oil or charge counter feeding some engine. The body is built to make sure that trigger keeps landing, and each mode is answer-shaped rather than value-shaped, so the choice is genuinely a read on the opponent rather than an autopilot draw. What pays for a 3/3 evasive-in-practice creature carrying interaction on a leash is that it does almost nothing the turn it resolves: the entire payoff is gated behind an unblocked attack. It rewards the deck that can protect an attacker and clear a lane, and punishes the opponent who has no clean way to trade with a first-strike deathtoucher.





