Hooded Assassin

The modal entry trigger is the whole pitch: a body that grows itself when there's nothing to kill, or finishes off something already bloodied when there is. That second mode is conditional removal in the cleanest sense, keying off "dealt damage this turn" rather than carrying its own punch, so the card asks for a board where combat has already happened or a burn spell has already landed. Pair it with a pinger, a fight effect, or just an attack into a chump and the assassin becomes a guaranteed kill spell stapled to a creature; cast it into an empty turn and you get a 2/3 that traded the removal mode away for stats. The split is deliberate: neither half is impressive on its own, and the design leans on the player to read the board and pick the line the turn actually offers. It's a workmanlike take on the assassin as opportunist, the creature that doesn't start the fight but cleans up after it, and the +1/+1 counter fallback means the card still does something on a turn when no target has been softened up.