Nest of Scarabs

The clever turn here is that a mechanic built to shrink a board doubles as one that grows yours. The -1/-1 counter was conceived as removal-by-attrition: spread enough of them and a creature dies, or withers into uselessness. This enchantment reads that same act as creation, converting the counters you place into bodies of their own. The wording is the whole engine, and the trigger fires only on counters you put down. It resolves per creature: each creature that receives one or more counters sets off its own trigger, minting a token for each counter on that creature. The total payout still tracks the total counters you distribute, so a spell that scatters a single counter onto every enemy creature pays out a token per body, and one effect that drops a stack onto a single target pays out that whole stack. Either way, a symmetric board-clearing spread becomes a one-sided swing in your favor, and even the smallest attrition nets you something: a counter spent to kill a lone 1/1 still hands you a 1/1 back. The Insects fold cleanly into sacrifice and aristocrat plans, serving as both attackers and fodder. The restriction worth naming is that it does nothing until you supply the counters yourself; it is the payoff half of a two-card pairing, not a standalone threat. Wherever your own -1/-1 sources are already flowing, though, it quietly inverts the math of attrition, charging the removal you were casting anyway as a stream of token production.