Sun-Blessed Guardian // Furnace-Blessed Conqueror

The front side is a 2/2 whose only job is to hold the transform button: it swings into nothing until you sink six mana (or five and two life) into flipping it, and the flip is the whole proposition. What comes back is an attack trigger that copies the creature tapped and attacking every combat, then sacrifices the token at end of turn: a repeatable doubling of a body that is already swinging, firing on each attack including across extra combats. The counter clause is the axis worth building toward. Because the copy inherits a +1/+1 counter for every counter on the original, each counter you add to the Conqueror contributes to two attackers at once, so a single counter buys two extra power on the swing rather than one. The scaling stays linear, but it is doubled linear, and that is enough to turn a modest counter engine into a lopsided combat step. That doubling is also the card's tension: the entire investment is front-loaded into the transform cost, and the payoff only lands if the creature survives to declare attackers, since it is the most obvious removal target on the board. The Phyrexian mana on the transform (, payable with two life) is the release valve for decks that cannot reliably find red on the turn they want to flip. It is a build-around wearing a quiet face, and the reward is proportional to how many counters you can stack before you declare attackers.