Merfolk Looter

The original loot engine, and the standard every card-filtering creature has been measured against since. The trade is brutal in its simplicity: a fragile body that does nothing the turn it lands, tapping for a draw-and-discard that costs you a card from your hand even as it refills it. That last clause is the discipline that makes the rate work. Looting is not card advantage; it is card selection, a way to dig past dead lands and fuel a graveyard rather than a way to pull ahead on raw count. The weak frame is exactly what you pay for the engine, and it is the obvious vulnerability: it dies to nearly anything, and an opponent who lets it tap repeatedly turn after turn is wagering that their removal is better spent on a real threat than on a filtering creature. What it opened up was the realization that controlled discard is an engine in its own right, not a downside to be minimized. Decks that wanted cards in the graveyard found the discard half a feature, and the design has been reissued in dozens of skins since: Looter il-Kor with evasion attached, Merfolk Trickster reimagining the tribe entirely. None retired the original, because it still poses the question every loot effect has had to answer ever after: is the card you draw worth more than the card you give up, turn after turn?