It generates its own energy if you need to scale up towards destroying more expensive permanents, but you can also just fire this off for and X=0 to clean up 0-mana clutter on the board
Paired with recursion engines like Myr Retriever and Scrap Trawler, it can even go infinite
Plus, some new cards, like the Etched Host Doombringer and Render Inert, help remove defense counters explicitly
Generally, simple border extensions (which I dabble in most often) should be tourney legal, but as I always say -- ask your local judge
Third, several cards in the set get better if you have the initiative
Howling Moon comes with a very low power floor of just giving a single creature +2/+2 each combat, not even trample