Rohirrim Lancer

Menace on a 1/1 is a threat with an asterisk: it either connects for a point or forces two blockers to gang up and kill it, which is exactly the awkward attack math a low-curve red deck wants to impose early. The clever part is the death clause. Whatever the opponent does about this creature, it advances the Ring's ladder the moment it hits the graveyard: block it with a pair of bodies and it dies, trade it away in combat and it dies, chump-attack it into removal and it dies. The tension lives on a body cheap enough to throw away, which is the whole idea. It is built to attack into blockers, die on purpose, and cash out on the way down. The catch that keeps it honest is the trigger's phrasing: it rewards you only when the creature actually dies, so an opponent who bounces it or exiles it denies the payoff entirely. That constraint is what an escalating-payoff plan has to work around. The Ring's earlier rungs are cheap and its later ones are decisive, and a mechanic that only pays when a creature happens to die is fragile without a creature whose entire job is dying. This is that piece: a small attacker built to feed the Ring engine, provided you can steer it into the graveyard rather than out of the game.