Vein Drinker

A fight-on-a-stick design with a black body and a red activation tax that quietly tells you what this card was built to live alongside. The marquee ability is a repeatable Prey Upon stapled to a 4/4 flier, but the third line is where the engine turns over: whenever a creature it has damaged this turn dies, it grows, so each successful trade leaves the body bigger and the next fight more lopsided. Snowball math like this usually demands a downside to stay fair, and here the downside sits on the front end. The in the activation cost means a mono-black deck cannot actually use the signature ability without splash help, and the fight is symmetrical: your 4/4 hands four damage back to whatever it points at, so aiming at a creature that punches above its toughness can get your own attacker killed instead. The counter only accrues when the damaged creature dies, which includes blockers it trades with in combat, not just the targets of the activated ability. That makes target selection a genuine decision rather than a free pinging loop. Black has no shortage of removal, but most of it destroys or shrinks something once; a repeatable fight that converts kills into permanent stats is a different shape entirely. The flier chassis means it pressures planeswalkers and life totals on the turns it is not fighting, which makes the reward for solving the red-mana wrinkle a removal piece that grows into a finisher.