Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls

The trigger is the whole engine, and its wording is doing careful work: it rewards the first time an opponent loses life on each of their turns, not the total, and not your own turns. That single-fire-per-opponent-per-turn clause is what keeps this from becoming an unbounded draw loop with a sacrifice outlet, but it also points the deck toward breadth rather than depth. One ping across a multiplayer table on each opposing turn adds up fast: with three opponents, a full turn cycle can net three counters and three cards, so the payoff scales with how many opponents you can needle rather than how hard you hit any one of them. It nudges a pilot toward pingers, drain effects, and anything that chips at opposing life during other players' turns, distributed wide, not toward a single haymaker. Note that the trigger reads "an opponent loses life," which quietly excludes your own payments and damage prevention edge cases; any incidental chip loss on an opponent's own turn feeds the demon, from a Pestilence tick to a phyrexian mana payment to a fetchland crack, which makes it far easier to satisfy than a combat-only reading would suggest. The Ward taxes anyone who tries to target it: two life per instance of targeting is the toll an opponent pays to remove or interact with it, and in a life-manipulation shell that toll itself can feed the counter. A 4/4 flier that grows and refills your hand every opposing turn answers the two questions an evasive commander usually leaves open (does it close games, and does it keep you in cards) with a single clause.