Leader, Super-Genius

Connive was designed as a self-contained loot: draw one, discard one, and the counter is the reward for pitching something you didn't need. This inserts an extra draw ahead of every connive you generate, so the net card advantage flips from break-even to positive. Each connive it touches becomes draw-two-discard-one, which changes what connive is for: no longer a filtering tool that trades card quantity for selection, but a genuine engine that grows your hand while it grows your board. The static replacement effect does the heavy lifting, but the printed combat trigger is the built-in fuel: a free connive at the beginning of combat on your turn, retargetable turn to turn, means the effect never sits idle waiting for outside enablers. The 1/3 body is the honest part of the design, a defensive shell that survives to keep the engine turning rather than a clock in its own right. What keeps the payoff scaling rather than breaking is that connive still forces the discard: you draw two and must throw one away, so the advantage arrives as a steady drip, and the +1/+1 counters accrue only when there's genuine chaff to feed the mechanic. It rewards a deck stuffed with connive triggers, and asks in return that you build a hand deep enough to keep discarding without cutting into your gas.