Skitter Eel

Adapt was the mechanic's answer to the mana-sink problem: a creature that starts small and grows once, but only if it hasn't already grown. That "no counters on it" clause is what separates adapt from a repeatable pump. Spend three mana on the ability once and this becomes a 5/5; try again with the counters still on it and the activation does nothing, because the check fails as long as any +1/+1 counter remains. The design pays for its ceiling by capping a single creature's ambition to one payment, not by pricing the payment high. It rewards spreading adapt activations across several bodies rather than dumping mana into one, and it punishes overcommitting to a target an opponent can answer once you've invested. The elegance is in how the ability converts a flooded late game into pressure without demanding a build-around: the counter check ensures each creature is a one-time investment rather than an engine that scales out of control. The one wrinkle worth knowing is that anything stripping the counters (a bounce back to hand, a copy without them) resets the creature, opening the door for a fresh adapt to fire again. It's the least glamorous version of the mechanic, a plain body attached to a plain sink, but it's also the cleanest illustration of what adapt is trying to solve: giving a small creature a second act that it can only ever get once.