Viashino Weaponsmith

The entire design hinges on a combat decision the defender would rather not have to make. Left unblocked, this is a modest 2/2; the moment a creature commits to stop it, the +2/+2 lands and the math flips, turning what looked like a clean block into a one-for-one (or worse) for the defender. The Viashino were Shiv's reckless engineers, and the card reads like one of their gadgets: it punishes you for engaging it on the ground, so the rational play is often to let it through. That is a deliberate inversion of how combat usually pressures the attacker. Most aggressive creatures want to be unblocked; this one wants to be blocked badly enough that opponents stop blocking, which is its own form of evasion built entirely out of incentive rather than a keyword. The pump is offensive in both trigger and payoff: the creature has to be attacking for the ability to fire at all, and the growth only arrives once a block commits, so the attacker never spends a card or a mana to bluff it. The threat does the work for free, every combat, until the opponent finds a blocker large enough to eat the buffed body or a removal spell to skip the question entirely.