Pharaoh Rama-Tut

A spellslinging payoff wearing a protection tax, and the wager is that a five-mana body earns its slot by growing off the cheap interaction the deck was already casting. The connive trigger fires on every noncreature spell: each cast filters a card, and any nonland discard grows the creature. That loop is self-feeding by design, casting spells fuels the loot, the loot digs toward more spells while trimming dead cards, and the discards translate into a body that eventually outsizes the removal it was supposed to die to. The choice to build on connive rather than a raw draw trigger is the balancing act. Straight card advantage stapled to a recurring trigger would be oppressive, so the discard clause forces a real decision at each cast: pitch a land and stay static, or feed a spent card into the growth. The size scales only with what you can genuinely spare, which keeps the clock honest without blunting the appeal. Ward sits over all of it as a flat toll that does not scale with the creature and does not need to; its only job is to make the first removal attempt cost enough that the engine gets one more turn to run. What emerges is control-adjacent value welded to a self-sufficient threat, built for a shell of cantrips and cheap answers, and punishing the opponent who spent too long looking for the removal while the creature quietly climbed out of its range.