Laccolith Whelp

The Laccolith mechanic in Nemesis was a small experiment in punishing the act of blocking: instead of dealing combat damage, the creature could redirect its power onto whatever stood in its way while declining to deal its own combat damage that turn. On a 1/1 the redirected payload is just one point, which is the whole tension of the cheapest version. The redirect does not destroy most blockers, and against a blocker that survives it does not save the Whelp from the blocker's own combat damage; what it buys you is a guaranteed point of damage aimed wherever you want it, taxing the defender for the privilege of committing a blocker at all. The whole cycle ran the same template up the cost curve, scaling the redirectable damage with the body, and this is the floor of the idea, where the redirect is at its smallest but cheapest to deploy. The wording is deliberately a may, and the timing is the point: the trigger fires when the creature becomes blocked, after blockers are declared but before combat damage, so the attacker chooses whether to convert combat damage into targeted damage once the defender has already committed. That conversion is the entire pitch. It is not a creature you cast for its stats; it is a creature that turns your opponent's blocking decision into a small, awkward tax, a punisher dressed as an attacker. The rest of the cycle made the threat lethal; the Whelp is where the idea is cheapest and easiest to shrug off.