Nikara, Lair Scavenger

The trigger reads like a modest aristocrats payoff until you notice the precise condition it wants: the creature that leaves has to be carrying at least one counter. That single clause turns a generic sacrifice sink into an engine with a deckbuilding requirement, and it does so by welding together two black card-advantage traditions that usually live apart: the death-draw of cards like Midnight Reaper, and the counter-matters accounting that white and green normally own. Here the draw fires on any departure (bounce, blink, exile, sacrifice), not just death, so a proliferate shell or a +1/+1 counter theme becomes a repeatable draw engine rather than a combat plan. The partner-with clause tutors Yannik, Scavenging Sentinel directly into a hand, and the two interlock by design: Yannik exiles a counter-bearing creature and returns it, dropping counters on something new, while every such exit feeds the draw. That loop is the reason the pairing exists, and it is priced around the one place black's color pie rarely reaches: counters leaving play. The life-loss rider is what stops the engine from spinning for free. Each departure costs you a point, so a long blink chain draws you toward a real risk of decking or bleeding out before your board runs dry. The 2/2 body with menace is incidental combat text; the design lives entirely in that conditional, which quietly hands black a mechanic it usually has to borrow.