Okiba-Gang Shinobi

Discard as a combat punisher has a chicken-and-egg problem: by the time a creature connects, an opponent who has dumped their grip onto the board has nothing left to lose two of. Ninjutsu sidesteps that timing. Because the cost is paid after blocks are declared but before combat damage, an unblocked attacker bounces to hand and this lands in its place tapped and attacking, so the opponent who committed blocks against a smaller, cheaper threat only learns the real cost once the swing is locked in. That bait-and-switch is the reason to build the front end small: a 3/2 that strips two cards is unremarkable as a five-mana hardcast, but devastating when it materializes mid-combat off the back of an evasive one-drop. Against a sorcery-speed discard spell the difference is that the opponent cannot sandbag cards to play around it; the hand-attack happens inside a combat step they have already entered. The shell this serves wants a reliable way to connect with something small and evasive and wants to convert that connection into resource denial rather than life loss, ideally before the opponent has had the turns to empty their hand on their own. It punishes the slow, durdling grip, which is exactly the hand that has the most to lose from a surprise two-card strip.