Goring Ceratops
The body is a tax; the attack trigger is the payoff, and it is a lopsided one. A 3/3 with double strike for seven mana is a rate you would never buy for the stats alone, but the moment this declares as an attacker, every other creature swinging with it gains double strike until end of turn. The math is the appeal: two 4/4s each land eight power on the same combat step, and any token-maker or anthem already on board turns the trigger into lethal. What gives the design its teeth is when the grant lands. The trigger goes on the stack while attackers are declared, before blocks, so the doubling is locked in as your opponent chooses how to trade: they are assigning chumps against a board that already has double strike coming. That same timing insulates the payoff from spot removal. Kill the Ceratops in response and the rest of the team still connects doubled, because a triggered ability exists on the stack independently of the permanent that created it; the source dying does nothing to stop it from resolving. The seven-mana price and the telegraph are what keep it from being a clean finisher: the grant only fires on attack, so it announces the alpha strike a full turn early and invites a sweeper before you ever swing. This is the haymaker a creature-heavy deck spends its whole curve building toward, a card that rewards a wide board and punishes you for overcommitting to build one.


