Startled Relic Sloth

A 4/4 with trample and lifelink for four is already a Boros race-winner that pays for itself: connect once and the life swing tilts a damage exchange, connect twice and you have bought back a full turn against another aggressor. What sets the body apart is the graveyard exile clause tied to the beginning of your combat step, a phase-triggered hit that resolves every turn before attackers are even declared. That timing is the design tension worth reading. Most incidental graveyard hate is one-and-done, a spell or an enters-the-battlefield trigger you spend and forget; this fires on its own every turn the creature survives to your combat, whether or not it swings, and strips a card from any graveyard for free. Against reanimator, dredge-style engines, or delirium and flashback shells, that is a recurring bleed the opponent cannot answer without dealing with the creature itself. The "up to one" single-target framing keeps it surgical: it lifts the specific reanimation payload or the flashback spell that matters most rather than emptying a yard, so it never has to guess about which card is the threat. And because it exiles rather than merely disrupting, it doubles as targeted denial against delve and escape decks, quietly deleting the fuel they would otherwise spend from the yard. Pairing sustained lifegain with recurring, opt-in graveyard denial in a color pair not usually asked to carry that duty is the whole idea: red and white get an attacker that closes games on the front and dismantles graveyard strategies on the back, without ever spending a card to do it.