Serrated Scorpion

A one-drop that pays a dividend on the way out: sacrifice it, chump with it, trade it in combat, and the death trigger fires the same, draining two and refilling two. The design lives entirely in that symmetry. Aristocrat decks want cheap bodies that turn dying into damage, and this one folds the payoff into itself rather than needing a separate outlet to convert it. The two-life gain is the quiet half of the equation: it makes the scorpion a passable brake against early aggression while still leaning toward the reach that closes games from the other seat. The constraint worth naming is that the trigger only hits players, never creatures, so it cannot be aimed at a board or a blocker; it is a life-total math tool, not a removal spell. The 1/2 body is deliberately unassertive, built to sit in front of a one-drop attacker and swap for it, at which point you are up two damage and two life on the exchange. Note the seam: the trigger keys off dying, not leaving play, so a bounce or an exile takes the payoff with it. To collect the increment you have to actually feed it to the graveyard. That is the texture of building around it: a black common that does no single spectacular thing and instead contributes a small, guaranteed unit of drain each death, the raw material an aristocrats deck stacks until the units add up to a kill.