Tendril of the Mycotyrant

The activated ability is where this Fungus earns its slot, and it is doing something structurally deliberate: for seven mana it turns a land you already control into a 7/7 with haste (a 0/0 body plus seven +1/+1 counters) that is still a land. That "still a land" clause is the whole design axis, but note what it does and does not buy you. There is no "until end of turn" rider, so the animation is permanent: the land is now a creature until something removes it, which means a sorcery-speed board wipe that hits creatures kills it just like any other, and you have converted a resource that would have survived that sweep into one that will not. In exchange you gain flexibility on the other end: land destruction, tapping effects, and anything that says "target land" now reach a threat that non-land removal would have missed. Building the body out of counters rather than a static buff matters too, since counters persist after the ability resolves and can be doubled, moved, or fed to proliferate and counter-matters payoffs in ways a printed 7/7 never could. The two-mana body is almost incidental, existing so the card is castable early and does something before the late-game mana comes online. What the card really is: a mana sink that converts a flooded board into a repeatable threat, trading one axis of removal exposure for another rather than dodging removal outright.