Order of the Ebon Hand

Pour enough black mana into this 2/1 and it stops being a fragile early drop: first strike for one black mana, +1/+0 for two, and suddenly the leftover lands of the late game become a clock. The Order belongs to the white-hate cycle that defined the Orders of Fallen Empires, where each member carried protection from an enemy color and two activated abilities paid in its own. Protection from white is the load-bearing piece, blanking white's targeted removal, its blockers, and its combat damage at once, so the creature walks through a white defense untouched while the abilities let it trade up or simply hit larger than its printed power. The discipline that caps the design is the toughness: every pump adds power and nothing else, so no matter how much black you spend, the body stays one damage from dying, and a chump block or a cheap burn spell erases the whole investment in a single shot. That is the bargain the card asks for: a high ceiling against the color it was built to hunt, a floor of a 2/1 that needs black mana on tap to do anything beyond stand in front of a white attacker.