Mage's Attendant

A 3/2 body that leaves behind a delayed, single-use counterspell: that split of the card's value is the whole design intent. The body attacks and blocks like a normal beater, but the Wizard token it drops is a tax effect held in reserve, ready to fire the turn an opponent tries to resolve a board wipe, a planeswalker, or a game-ending noncreature spell. Crucially, the counter only hits noncreature spells, so the token does nothing against a follow-up threat: it is a check on the removal and the value engines, not the creatures. What makes the token dangerous is timing rather than reach. It sits on the battlefield doing nothing until it matters, converting a creature slot into stack interaction that white does not usually get to hold up, and unlike a card in hand, the answer is already committed and visible, so opponents can play around it. The tax is soft (a Force Spike attached to a body rather than a hard counter), which keeps it honest against decks with mana to spare while still buying a tempo swing against a topdecked haymaker. White pays full freight here: you trade raw efficiency for board presence and information, folding a piece of reactive control into an aggressive shell that would otherwise have no answer for the noncreature spells that break its game plan.