Knight of Wundagore
Counters decks have always run into a distribution problem: every buff you spread across the team is power you did not put on your best attacker, and every pump you concentrate leaves the board thin. This one resolves that tension by taxing itself off your generosity. Grow another creature and it grows too, so the payoff for going wide with counters is a threat that keeps pace with the whole squad without ever asking you to target it directly. The "only once each turn" clamp is the line item that keeps the ability from spiraling: it does not care how many creatures you buff or how many counters land, only that at least one did, which means a single proliferate or a lone modular trigger feeds it the same as an army-wide anthem. Trample is the natural closer for a creature whose size is a function of how much you have invested elsewhere, turning a board full of one-drops into a lethal delivery vector. At two mana for a 2/1, the body is fragile on its own, and that fragility is the honest price: it wants a counters engine already humming, not a fresh battlefield. Green has printed plenty of cards that hand out counters; this is one of the few that reads them back off the rest of your team and stacks the ledger on a single frame.
