Sarpadian Simulacrum

A one-mana hasty body that carries four damage on its back, redeemable later at a full turn's mana. The value is in the split: the Goblin gets in for early aggression right away, then converts into a four-damage shot at a creature once the board stalls or a specific threat needs dying. Because the ability sacrifices the 1/1, the body was always meant to be spent rather than kept, so nothing is lost by cashing it in; the artifact type quietly folds the creature into affinity, improvise, and metalcraft counts before it ever fires. And the price is the point. Four mana for four damage to a single creature is a bad rate against any dedicated removal spell, which would ask one or two: what you are buying with that overpay is not efficiency but option value, the freedom to attack while the ability sits latent and only spend the mana when you know exactly what you want dead. That is the tax a two-mode card pays for keeping both modes live. It is the kind of small, dense unit red aggro has always wanted: a threat that never sits inert in hand, that pressures early and trades up on its own schedule, and that asks nothing of the deck except the willingness to spend a whole turn's mana at the moment removal is worth more than a 1/1 in the red zone.