Knight of the Ebon Legion

A one-drop that never stops scaling, priced so it's live off the top of the deck in the late game. The pump ability is the engine: three mana turns it into a 4/5 deathtoucher, a mana sink that both threatens to trade up and pushes damage across the four-life threshold that grows the body permanently. That end-step counter is the design pivot. Most aggressive one-drops are curve-fillers that go dead once the board stalls; this one converts every point of surplus reach (its own attacks, a burn spell, a second attacker) into stats it keeps. The two abilities feed each other in a tight loop: activate to punch through for lethal-adjacent damage, cross four life, keep a counter, activate again next turn from a bigger base. Deathtouch is the wrinkle that makes the pump more than a Falter-proof beatstick, since it lets the card ambush any blocker or attacker regardless of size while the controller holds up mana. What balances it is that the counter is conditional and the pump is not free: with no gas, it's a 1/2 that dies to almost everything, and the four-life clause rewards a deck already applying pressure rather than one hoping to durdle. It's a mana sink and a threat and a mana-flood insurance policy in a single black pip, which is why it stayed relevant well past the window one-mana beaters usually close.