Septic Rats

A poison clock with a self-rewarding trigger. Infect splits this creature's combat damage into two distinct failure states for the opponent: minus-one-minus-one counters on their blockers, poison counters on their face. The attack ability is what separates this body from the rank-and-file infect beaters of its era: it performs a binary check, not a scaling one. Once the defending player carries any poison at all (a single counter is enough), the trigger flips on and the creature swings as a 3/3 instead of a 2/2 for that combat. There is no further escalation past that first point: ten poison and one poison grant the same flat boost. The wrinkle worth noting is that the bonus is gated behind the seal already being broken, so the creature's whole job is split in two. Early, it leans on the bare infect body to land that first poison counter; after, it attacks one size larger every turn the opponent stays poisoned. The condition checks the defending player specifically, which means a single committed victim turns the trigger on permanently, while spreading poison across a multi-opponent board leaves it idling against everyone who has not yet been hit. Three mana for a 2/2 is a steep entry rate for a creature whose upside does nothing until the clock is already moving, but the boost is reliable rather than incremental: break the seal once, and the 3/3 stays on until the poison clears, which it rarely does.