Supply-Line Cranes

Five mana for a 2/4 flier that drops a single +1/+1 counter is a rate built for a specific kind of deck: one where that counter is not a bonus but a payload. The body is defensive by design, a wall in the air that trades up against most early fliers and shrugs off the small burn that would kill a comparable attacker. The enters trigger is where the intent shows. A lone counter on a vanilla creature is filler; on a creature that cares about being modified (an outlast board that stockpiles counters, a creature with a counters-matter payoff, a proliferate shell that multiplies whatever it lands on) it becomes the connective tissue that lines the other pieces up. And because the counter arrives via a targeted enters trigger rather than a cast spell, it splits the difference between two kinds of engine: it advances anything that counts counters, and it also pings targeting-sensitive creatures without spending a spell to do it, since the ability still chooses a target on the stack. The design leans toward synergy over tempo: too slow to swing a race, too small to dominate the ground, its slot is earned entirely by what receives the counter. That makes it a deckbuilder's role-player, a card whose ceiling is set by the board it joins rather than anything printed on it. In a vacuum it reads as overcosted; in a structure where counters accumulate into a threat, the flying defender that also advances the plan is paying for two jobs at once.