The Thing, Ben Grimm

The payoff a Hero deck is built to reach: a 7/7 trampler that grows by two every time your team connects, and grows on any Hero's damage, not just its own. That distinction is the whole engineering feat. Most snowball creatures reward their own combat step; this one taxes the entire board's attack, so a swarm of small Heroes each poking through for a point of damage feeds the same engine as one big hit. The counters accumulate after the combat you already committed to, meaning the threat that was 7/7 when the turn began is 9/9 or 11/11 by the time it swings back, and trample ensures those counters convert to damage the moment a blocker undersizes it. The design leans hard on the counter-doubling and proliferate infrastructure green has spent years accumulating: every source that manipulates +1/+1 counters compounds a payoff that already compounds itself. Crucially, it is a Hero itself, so it never depends on a supporting cast to start turning: swing in alone, connect, and it self-fuels, arriving at 9/9 the next turn on its own trigger. A wide Hero board only widens your reach into more players, folding incidental chip damage into a snowballing clock. What it does not do is close from an empty board on turn six the way a hasty finisher might; this is a threat that pays off a turn of commitment rather than instantly, and the six-mana 7/7 rate reflects a reward for a plan already in motion.