Null Champion

Level up packaged a creature's whole growth curve onto one card, and this Zombie Warrior takes the cheapest, most aggressive read of that promise: a two-mana 1/1 whose real value lives in the sorcery-speed mana you pour into it after it lands. The face-up trade is meager, but the payoff arrives fast, since the first threshold is wide. A single activation flips the 1/1 into a 4/2, a body that already swings well above its cost. Three more counters reach level four and turn it into a 7/3 with regeneration, attack power that has no business sitting on something that cost two mana to deploy. That regenerate clause, gated behind the top tier, is the quiet load-bearing piece: a 7/3 that dies to a single chump-and-trade would be a thin reward for that much invested mana, so the design hands you stickiness exactly when you have committed the most. The toughness staying low throughout (2, then 3) is the deliberate brake. This is a creature built to win races and brawl in combat, not to grind, and any exile or bounce effect answers the entire investment regardless of how many counters have stacked up. It is a clean study in level-up as a mana sink for the patient: cheap to drop, expensive to realize, and fragile in a way that keeps the eventual 7/3 from ever feeling free.