Grunn, the Lonely King

The name and the mechanic are the same joke told twice: a king with no subjects, whose power is literally a function of swinging without any. The attack-alone clause reads as a thesis on the loneliness in the title, and it sets the whole strategic axis. Kicker is the setup cost: pay it and Grunn arrives with five +1/+1 counters riding the 5/5 body rather than as a bare 5/5, which matters because the doubling multiplies whatever base it finds. Swing solo from a kicked 10/10 and you are stamping in for twenty: a two-hit clock unkicked, a much shorter one kicked. That is why he never feels safe. Doubling rewards committing everything to a single attacker, but a single attacker is exactly what removal, blockers, and combat tricks are built to punish, so every solo swing is a wager that the coast is clear. Grunn wants a board you have already emptied, or evasion so that "alone" and "unblocked" coincide. The counters are what separate his ceiling from a temporary pump: the doubling wears off at end of turn and Grunn would snap back to his printed body, but the five counters are permanent, so a kicked Grunn stays a 10/10 across turns and hands the doubling a bigger base to work from each swing. A solitary brute whose strength scales with isolation, priced up front and paid off only if you can protect the wager.