Startle

Three effects share one instant, and each falls short of justifying a card by itself. The -2/-0 is combat math dressed as removal: it kills nothing, but it turns an attacker's swing into a whiff or shrinks a blocker below the thing it was meant to trade with. Behind that sits a 2/2 Zombie and a cantrip to keep you whole, and the package holds together at two mana precisely because of what that body cannot do. Decayed is the tax on the rest: a permanent 2/2 stapled to a cantrip would be absurdly cheap, so this token can never block, and it sacrifices itself at end of combat once it attacks. What you rent is one swing, not a creature you own, which is why a trick, a body, and a replacement can coexist here without any single line overreaching. It scales the value-instant idea all the way down: the marquee versions bundle a counter, a bounce, and a draw onto one card and let the sum clear the price. This does the same arithmetic in miniature, three lines that each land beneath a full spell and together settle the cost exactly because none is quite good enough to stand alone.