Mongoose Lizard

The whole point of a creature with cycling is that it never sits dead in your hand: the floor is a card you pitch to smooth a draw, the ceiling is a body you actually cast. This one raises both ends. Landcycling for a Mountain is the fixing insurance that makes a double-red top end safe to run, so the six-mana cost carries less risk than the pip count suggests. And when that insurance isn't needed, what you cast is a 5/6 with menace that pings something for 1 on the way in: enough to finish a planeswalker already under pressure, clear a one-toughness chump blocker, or push the last point at a face. The design trades raw efficiency (six mana for a five-power body is nobody's idea of a rate) for optionality on both axes, the top-of-curve beater and the early-game land you can go dig for instead. Menace is the detail that keeps the body relevant past the turn you play it: a 5/6 that demands two blockers stays a clock deep into a stalled board where a lone attacker would simply get eaten. Nothing here is doing new structural work; it is a clean, deliberately flexible piece of a red midrange curve, built so it is never the card you regret drawing.