Mister Hyde, Monster Within

The upkeep menu here is the whole idea: a growth engine that can, at any point, reverse itself into card advantage. Most creatures that accumulate +1/+1 counters commit to a single trajectory, getting bigger and more threatening turn over turn until removal answers them. This one hedges. The second mode lets you strip a counter off any creature you control (Hyde included) to refill your hand, which turns the pile of counters you have been building into a bank you can draw down. That converts what is usually a liability (a big creature that trades one-for-one with a removal spell) into a resource you can cash out on your own terms. The tension is deliberate: every turn you spend growing is a turn you are not drawing, and the counter you finally remove to draw a card is one you spent an earlier upkeep placing. It rewards a board where counters live on other creatures too, so removing one somewhere else keeps your finisher intact while still feeding the engine. The body is small enough that the growth mode is not optional filler; a 2/2 that stalls out is a real cost, which is why the modal choice, rather than the counters themselves, is where the play lives. Notably, the draw mode never runs dry as long as any creature you control still carries a counter, giving a counters-matters board a slow but self-sustaining source of cards.