Thriving Grubs

The cleanest expression of energy as a self-contained battery. The two counters from the enter trigger are not seed money for a deck-wide engine; they are exactly the fuel this creature needs to grow itself once, and that closed loop is the whole point. Attack, pay the two you were handed, and the 2/1 becomes a 3/2 before blockers are declared. No other energy source required, no payoff card to find: the body produces and consumes its own resource across a single curve, so the aggression is baked in even though the growth is gated behind committing to the attack. The interesting part is the timing window. The counter is offered during the declare attackers step, so the upgrade is priced in combat exposure rather than mana: you tip the bigger body to the defender before they choose blocks, and a board that punishes attacks can deny the trigger entirely by keeping the creature home. In a deck that runs a broader engine, the calculus inverts: those two counters become liquid currency the creature donated to the pool, and the attacker can be left small while the energy fuels something larger elsewhere. That tension between feeding yourself and feeding the deck is the sharpest decision the card asks, and it is the sort of texture that made the energy mechanic worth revisiting long after its first appearance.