Wren's Run Hydra

Reinforce always sold itself as a compromise: a creature card that could dump itself from hand as a pump spell when you needed the growth more than the body. Most reinforce cards made that trade feel like a downgrade, since the creature they gave up was forgettable. This one refuses the consolation prize on either side. The X-cost hydra body scales to whatever mana you have, arriving with X counters and reach, so the "keep the creature" mode is a genuine finisher rather than a two-drop you were happy to discard. The discard mode is what makes the split live: put X counters on a creature already committed to the board, at instant speed, buying growth that stays put through the rest of the game rather than wearing off at end of turn. That permanence is the real difference from a combat trick. If the creature dies the counters die with it, same as any buff, but as long as the body survives, the growth compounds into future turns and future combats instead of evaporating. Reach is the tax that keeps the beater mode honest, letting a green fatty answer fliers in the air without leaning on a whole keyword suite. The tension every reinforce card carries (you can only afford one mode, and picking it means abandoning the other) is sharpened here because both modes are worth wanting: a sizable threat, or a permanent injection of stats into a creature you already control.