Vadmir, New Blood

A 2/2 for two that grows only once per turn is a stranger threat than the counter engine first suggests. Crime is cheap and easy to commit several times in a single turn, so the once-per-turn cap on the trigger is what stops this from ballooning; the throttle reframes the deckbuilding question from "how many crimes can I stack" to "can I reliably commit at least one crime every single turn," which is a far more interesting sequencing problem than raw enabler density. The payoff is entirely back-loaded and waits at four counters, where menace and lifelink switch on together to turn a modest attacker into a clock that also stabilizes: menace pushes damage through, lifelink pays for the aggression. That gating gives this two-drop a double life across a game. In its early turns it is a fragile body that any removal answers cleanly, and the reward is gated behind four turns of uninterrupted crime, so a single exile or bounce effect resets the whole investment. The tension between how cheaply it enters and how much it demands to pay off is the real texture: a curve-topping threat priced at two mana that asks a black shell to keep grinding on opponents' resources turn after turn so the counters, and eventually the keywords, accrue on schedule. Reach four and you have earned an evasive lifegain engine; stall at three and you are still spending your turns feeding a growing but toothless body, one step short of the payoff it was built around.