Smogsteed Rider

Evasion granted by a herald rather than carried on its own back: the body that triggers this stays a vulnerable 2/2, but every other attacker it sends in becomes nearly impossible to chump. The design instinct here is the alpha-strike enabler, a creature whose job is not to connect itself but to clear a lane for the board behind it. Fear was the era-appropriate dressing for black: a soft evasion that folds only to artifact creatures and other black creatures, which in most matchups means it folds to almost nothing. What gives the effect its teeth is that it scales with the width of the assault. One attacker beside it gets through; a board of seven does too, all at once, on the turn you decide to swing. That makes it a payoff for going wide, the inverse of the usual black plan of grinding one threat through removal. The cost is that the engine is entirely contingent on combat math you control: it does nothing on a stalled board, nothing when you have no second creature, and the herald itself dies to any two-power blocker that bothers to trade. It rewards committing to the attack rather than holding back, which is precisely the decision black aggro is often least comfortable making.