Lurking Lizards

Most +1/+1 counter creatures grow by attacking, by dying triggers, or by keying off a creature type. This one grows off the top of your curve: the gate is a flat spell-cost threshold, agnostic to what the spell actually does. A four-drop removal spell, a fat finisher, a hefty ramp piece all feed the lizard equally, which is the quiet flexibility that flat trigger buys over the usual combat- or tribe-scaling designs. Every counter is stapled to a spell you were already casting for its own effect, so the growth is free in tempo terms; the price is the deckbuilding constraint of leaning heavy at the expensive end. The 1/3 with trample is a deliberately unassuming shell: it survives early combat, blocks the small creatures that would race it, and asks the pilot to keep casting big things so the trample damage means something later. There is no upper bound and no protection on those counters, which keeps it honest against sweepers: this rewards a board that already has other threats, not a solo project. What makes it green through and through is less the counter engine (a shared idiom) than the direction of the payoff. It sits opposite the go-wide and spells-matter plans that usually own this space, pointing instead toward the ramp-and-fatties archetype that has always wanted a cheap body worth keeping.