Unnatural Predation

The combat trick stripped down to its load-bearing minimum: one mana buys a small stat bump and, more importantly, trample. The +1/+1 is almost incidental; what the green mana actually pays for is the keyword. Green's recurring problem in combat is the chump block, the lone 1/1 that eats an attack and trades a card for nothing. Trample is the color's structural answer, and pricing it at a single mana on an instant turns it into a cheap insurance policy: a way to push damage through a planned block, to convert a fattie's bulk into face damage, or to bait a removal spell mid-combat. It belongs to a long line of green pump spells that double as reach (Giant Growth being the archetype), but those typically spend their mana on raw size. This one trades that size for evasion, which is the better deal whenever the board has already tilted in your favor and the only thing between you and lethal is a body in the way. The cost is its narrowness: outside of an aggressive creature deck looking to close, a +1/+1 swing rarely justifies the card. It is utility fixed at the floor, doing exactly one job cheaply and nothing else.