Nested Ghoul

The trigger cares about the event, not the magnitude: any single source that deals damage, whether it lands one point or four, queues up exactly one 2/2 Phyrexian Zombie. That distinction is the whole engine. The body is a 4/2, fragile by design, but the fragility is the point rather than a flaw, because the ability fires on every separate source of damage. The design inverts the usual instinct for a small creature: instead of protecting it, you want it taking hits from as many independent sources as you can arrange, since each source resolves its own trigger and bank its own token. A repeatable pinger that taps to deal one to it every turn refills your board indefinitely without ever finishing it, which is the cleanest way to milk the effect. The lethal case is worth being precise about, because it runs against intuition. If a single source deals two or more, the creature dies to state-based actions before the triggered ability is even put on the stack. But the trigger still happened: damage triggers fire on the damage event, go on the stack after state-based checks, and resolve regardless of whether the creature survived. You still get the token off a lethal hit. What this rewards is parceling damage across many small sources rather than fewer big ones, since every distinct hit is one more token, and a repeatable, non-finishing source is the ideal partner.