Skirk Commando

The trigger fires on connection, not on contact: this Goblin deals its 2 damage to a creature only when it gets through unblocked and lands combat damage on a player. That single condition turns the face-down option into a bluff with teeth rather than a costume for something bigger. Cast for , it shows itself as a fragile 2/1 with a conditional payoff that any opponent can simply block away. Hidden under a morph, it becomes an unremarkable 2/2, and the defending player faces the only question that matters to them: chump a blank-looking creature, or take two and hold their blockers back? Decline the block, and unmorphing for converts the connection into a removal spell, the body landing the swing and the trigger picking off a creature with two toughness or less that the same player controls. The disguise here is not hiding a bomb; it is withholding the one fact an opponent needs (that waving the attack through costs more than two life). The effect is small and tightly bounded (2 damage, and only to a creature controlled by the player who took the hit), so the whole engine lives in the information gap the morph manufactures. It belongs to a school of red creatures that price combat damage as the down payment on a kill, where the swing buys the trigger and the morph cost closes the deal once the opponent has already chosen not to interact.