Grist, Voracious Larva // Grist, the Plague Swarm
The prior Grist made a game of the type line: a legendary planeswalker that counted as a creature everywhere it wasn't on the battlefield, so it fetched off creature tutors and looped through recursion effects. This one inverts the trick, starting as a creature in every zone and only earning its planeswalker back half by transforming. That transform trigger is the whole design: the larva is a one-mana deathtouch blocker that flips only when a creature you control enters from your graveyard, or is cast from it, and you pay a green. The clause reads like a synergy hint and functions as a governor. Nothing stops a cheap deathtouch body from leading a turn one, but the walker on the other side stays locked behind a graveyard already doing work: reanimation, self-mill, a recurred creature returning to the battlefield. Fold that delay away and a one-mana permanent would simply resolve into a one-mana Grist, which is exactly the outcome the trigger refuses to grant for free. The flipped side runs the familiar Grist engine (Insect tokens that mill and sometimes arrive armed with deathtouch, artifact-or-enchantment removal on the minus, and an ultimate that reconstitutes your graveyard's creatures as a swarm), but the tension sits on the larva. It is a threat you can trade or feed to a sacrifice outlet without regret, since its best line is dying and coming back once your recursion package is humming. A payoff wearing the costume of a chump blocker.
Rules text
. If you do, exile Grist, then return it to the battlefield transformed under its owner's control.
//
+1: Create a 1/1 black and green Insect creature token, then mill two cards. Put a deathtouch counter on the token if a black card was milled this way.
−2: Destroy target artifact or enchantment.
−6: For each creature card in your graveyard, create a token that's a copy of it, except it's a 1/1 black and green Insect.
