Smelted Chargebug

Energy has usually been a slow-cook resource: a pool you fill across turns and cash out on a single big payoff. This little artifact insect inverts that rhythm by handing you the fuel up front and then asking you to spend it in combat. The two counters it makes on entry cover two attack triggers, each one turning a different attacking creature into a +1/+0 threat with menace for the turn. That reframes energy as combat ammunition rather than a bank balance: a repeatable evasion enabler that only fires while the bug itself is swinging, only on another attacker, and only until the stockpile runs dry. The 1/3 body is built to survive the early turns so it can join the assault rather than trade off, and its own menace matters mostly as insurance against a single blocker sitting in front of it. The tension sits in that finite pool. Two pumps is enough to break a stalled board or force through a key threat twice, but the effect goes cold unless the deck keeps generating fresh energy or the game closes before the well does. Menace does not make a creature unblockable; it demands two or more blockers, so the trick is at its best when the opponent is short on bodies and cannot afford to gang up. Less a beater than a combat-step multiplier that has to show up on the front line to do its work.