Gnarlid Colony

Two cards folded into one castable body, with the price flexible enough to fit the early game or the midgame depending on which mode the board calls for. Flat for two mana it is a modest 2/2 carrying a blanket anthem: every creature you control with a +1/+1 counter gains trample. Kicked, it arrives with two counters already on it, so it hands trample to itself while landing as a real threat rather than filler. The static ability is the reason to run it. In a deck that traffics in +1/+1 counters, the trample rider converts stalled ground creatures into damage that spills over blockers, which is exactly what counters decks tend to lack once the board clogs. That the anthem attaches to a two-drop rather than a fragile enchantment or a five-mana payoff is the design intent, front-loading the keyword grant to a creature cheap enough to hit the table before the counters pile up. The kicker is a mode chosen at cast time, not a switch flipped later: pay it and you get an immediate body worth attacking with; skip it and you still deploy the anthem for two mana while your other counter-bearers do the swinging. The trample only matters if you are already building around counters. Outside that shell it is a plain 2/2 whose overpay still makes it a trampling threat on its own, the anthem otherwise sitting inert. Inside one, it is the glue that turns a wide, evenly-blocked board into a fatal one.