Purple Worm

The big-worm archetype has been printed a dozen ways since the earliest sets: 7/6 or 9/9 bodies for seven mana, decorated with trample or a splashy tap-down ability, all of them fighting the same losing battle against showing up late and dying on arrival. This design answers both problems without touching combat at all. The cost reduction cares about any creature dying this turn, yours or theirs, so the discount naturally arrives in sacrifice-heavy and go-wide green shells where the ground is already a meat grinder. On the back of a trade or a chump block, an 8/7 for five is well ahead of the green curve, and the payoff comes exactly when green wants a fresh threat to rebuild. Ward is the second half of the bargain: a beater of this size would historically eat a removal spell the moment it resolved, but the modest tax forces an opponent to pay up or find a way around it, buying the worm a swing it would not otherwise get. Neither ability carries the card alone (the discount is dead on an empty board, the ward is trivial to pay through with mana up), but stacked they turn a body that reads as generic into one built for a specific green plan: attrition first, then a hasteless finisher that lands cheap and sticks.