Pests of Honor

Celebration flips the usual counter-creature relationship: instead of growing through combat damage or a paid activation, this mouse collects a +1/+1 counter as a dividend on the same overloaded turns a go-wide deck already wants to have. The check counts nonland permanents that entered under your control this turn, and two clears the bar. That threshold is low enough that a token maker, a cheap creature plus a trinket, or an enchantment and a follow-up spell all qualify, so a busy shell meets the demand reliably rather than occasionally. The count resets each turn, which is the part worth studying: you are not building toward a permanent state but hitting the number again, turn after turn, to keep the counters flowing. Growth is a consequence of executing your gameplan, not a separate cost bolted onto it. The 2/2 body means the first counter lands with immediate value, turning an easily-blocked body into something that trades up and pressures a stalled board. Nothing here demands a build-around; the design simply asks that your curve and your turns stay crowded, and rewards a table already flooded with your permanents. It is the payoff structured to make a deck that was going to play out this way anyway play out a little bigger.