Nef-Crop Entangler

Left alone, this two-drop attacks as a 2/1 with trample: a flat, forward-leaning body that pressures early and trades into the first blocker willing to step in front of it. Exert it and the math shifts to a 3/3 that pushes damage past a chump, swinging for a chunk no ordinary one-drop blocker can absorb. The cost is structural, not paid in mana or life. An exerted attacker skips your next untap step, so every boosted swing mortgages a turn of defense or a future attack. That tension is what keeps the design honest at common: you choose, attack by attack, whether you need the extra body now or the tapped-down creature later, and a creature this small has to keep swinging to matter, which means you keep facing the same decision. The trample is what ties the two halves together. Without it, the +1/+2 just inflates a creature a single blocker still neutralizes; with it, the larger body converts into face damage a defensive board cannot fully eat. It is a small design doing one thing repeatedly and asking the pilot to price out each repetition.