Priests of Norn
A defensive body wearing an offensive keyword, and the friction between those two facts is the whole reason it exists. Infect is a clock built for aggression: you want it attacking, stacking poison, racing toward the ten-counter kill before anyone can stabilize. Vigilance on a 1/4 pulls the other direction, asking the creature to sit back and never tap out of blocking range. The poison it deals on the way in is almost incidental; what the toughness buys is a wall that happens to be lethal if left unanswered. That makes it a different kind of infect threat than the glass-cannon one-drops that defined the mechanic's racing decks. Those wanted to be cast and swung the same turn. This one is content to garrison: it holds the ground, deters attackers (an attacker that does not kill it outright walks away with a -1/-1 counter, shrinking for the trouble), and keeps a poison clock ticking that an opponent cannot ignore indefinitely. The Phyrexian Cleric framing fits the design exactly, a devotional grinder rather than a striker. It is the slowest, most patient expression of a mechanic otherwise built for speed, and the vigilance is the hinge that lets a four-toughness defender double as a win condition that never stops threatening.
