Sunshower Druid

The counter is the point, not the body. A one-drop that spends its entire stat line to buy a +1/+1 counter wants a target that will do something durable with it: a token that becomes a real threat, a creature racing to get ahead of a damage-based sweeper, or a permanent whose counter feeds something beyond raw size. That last option is where a 0/2 for green earns its keep, because counters in green plug into a whole web of payoffs (proliferate, outlast-style growth, mutual bonuses) that turn one druid's arrival into a compounding board. The incidental life gain rounds out the profile as an early blocker that buys back a sliver of what aggression costs. And when the board is empty, the counter can go on the druid's own back, leaving a 1/3 that has already banked its value: no downside floor, just a diminished ceiling. That self-targeting option is the quiet discipline in the design, letting a support creature never read as a dead card while keeping its best line contingent on a better target being present. This is green's take on a support one-drop whose worth lives almost entirely in what surrounds it, a shape that keeps getting reprinted in new bodies because a cheap creature that leaves a permanent stat bonus behind always finds a home in a deck built to spend it.