Khenra Scrapper
Exert turns the attack step into a wager, and this jackal lays the math out cleanly. The decision happens during declare attackers, before blocks: you commit to the 4/3 with menace, the opponent sees the full size, and only then chooses how to defend. So the pressure is not a trick but a known quantity, a body too large for most single blockers to trade with and too menacing to chump without committing two creatures. The cost is structural rather than mana-based: an exerted attacker skips your next untap step, so the four points you pushed are paid for by a turn spent unable to block. That asymmetry is the heart of the keyword. You set the aggression to the board in front of you each combat instead of paying a fixed activated cost, and you weigh tempo against a back-swing you cannot make. The 2/3 base toughness is the quiet half of the design: it outlasts incidental pings and survives sitting exposed on the opponent's turn, so exerting stays a live choice rather than a coin flip you are forced into. This is aggression built around tempo accounting, a creature that asks each combat whether two extra points now are worth being a turn behind later.


