Ruthless Knave
A two-stage conversion engine compressed onto one Pirate body, and the arithmetic between the two stages is the entire design. The first ability spends to turn any creature you control into two Treasures: notice that this nets you a mana behind, so the ability is not ramp but a converter, taking a body worth nothing on defense and repackaging it as two color-fixed artifacts you can spend later. The second ability then eats three Treasures to draw a card. The mismatch between those numbers is the whole tension. One sacrifice yields two Treasures, but the draw wants three, so a creature never converts cleanly into a card on its own: you need a second source of Treasures, or a second creature fed through the first ability, before the hand-refill comes online. That forces a sequencing question every turn, because each Treasure is split between two jobs (fuel the next spell or bank toward the draw) and the Knave makes you price one against the other. The 3/2 does enough to attack and to feed itself when nothing better presents, so the card is never dead in hand. This is synergy plumbing for decks built to recycle small creatures into resources: fodder in, fixing and cards out, with the conversion math, not the stat line, doing the work.


