Iron Bully

The 1/1 body is the tax the card pays for the counter it drops on entry: a bigger stat line at this cost would make the enter-the-battlefield trigger too cheap for what it enables, so the golem shows up small and hands its value elsewhere. That trigger fires once, not repeatedly, but it does the work that most counter payoffs refuse to do: it seeds a +1/+1 counter without asking you to already have one in play. Most counter cards demand a board that is halfway there; this one starts the chain itself, which makes it a clean first link for proliferate and +1/+1-matters lines that multiply what a single counter begins. The target clause reads narrowly (it must land on a creature, and only on entry) but that same restriction is what rewards flicker and reanimation: every time the golem re-enters, the counter drops again, no full engine piece to recast. And "target creature" includes the golem, so with nothing better to grow it can become a 2/2 with menace and actually apply pressure rather than sit as a chump. The menace matters less as raw evasion than as a statement of intent: the design wants this thing pointing its investment at a real threat, then wading into combat as a nuisance while that threat gets bigger. Colorless and modest, it is built to prime a pump, not to be one.