Rhonas's Stalwart

Exert was the rare keyword built around a deferred cost: the bonus lands now, the tax arrives at your next untap step. Most exert designs spent that tax on something loud, a tapper effect or a card-draw trigger. This one buys an evasion clause instead, narrowly chosen to do real work in a green aggro shell. A 2/2 that swings as a 3/3 and slips past anything with power 2 or less is sized to punch through exactly the wall green decks struggle against: the chump tokens and small defensive bodies that otherwise trade up or stall the ground. Note the limit on the clause: a 3-power blocker still stops it cold, so the evasion covers the small stuff, not the whole board. The exert math is where the bargain shows its teeth. Skipping the untap means this attacker stays tapped through your opponent's turn and can't come back the following turn either, so the evasion you bought once costs two turns of absence from blocking and a turn off from attacking. That tradeoff makes the card most natural in a deck that never wanted to block anyway, where the missed untap is a cost you were already prepared to eat. The design leaves the choice in your hands every combat: exert for the bigger, evasive body and eat the downtime, or send it in unexerted as a plain 2/2 that untaps on schedule. The decision is whether beating the small blockers this turn is worth sitting out the next exchange.