Typhoid Rats

Deathtouch on the cheapest body the rules allow is a quiet act of math. Combat damage is binary here: any blocker that swings into this trades, any attacker that crashes through trades, and the single point of toughness becomes irrelevant the instant the creature touches anything bigger. That is the whole design lever. A one-mana 1/1 is otherwise a footnote, but stapling deathtouch to it converts the smallest possible investment into a tax on every large creature an opponent controls, since profitable attacks and blocks both have to route around it. The body never wins a damage race; it changes the arithmetic of who is willing to enter combat. Deathtouch has lived on bigger and stranger frames over the years, but the version that strips the keyword down to its load-bearing essence (no second ability, no relevant stats, just the threat that any contact is lethal) shows most plainly why the mechanic is priced the way it is. A creature this small earns its place not by attacking or blocking but by making the threat of doing so credible, and the flavor lands clean: the rat does not need to be strong, only diseased.