Spellweaver Eternal

The two keywords pull in the same direction, which is what makes the pairing sharper than it reads. Prowess wants cheap spells thrown at it to grow a threat that has to be handled in combat. Afflict turns that combat math against the blocker: the defending player loses two life the instant they declare a block, so the usual answer to a pumped attacker (chump it, spend the trick, move on) now costs life every time it happens. At 2/1 the body is small enough that an opponent would love to trade into it, and afflict punishes exactly that instinct. Stack a prowess trigger on the attack and the choice sours further: block and eat the life, or let a larger, evasive-feeling body through. This is a tempo aggressor that taxes the very interaction it provokes, the opponent bleeding whether they engage or not, then rewarding the spells-matter shell it slots into for the privilege of pumping it mid-combat. The Zombie Snake Wizard typing reads as undeath stitched onto a serpent, an artifact of the plane it comes from, but the function is pure red-adjacent aggression wearing blue: a two-drop that forces a bad answer no matter which way the opponent leans.