A-Thousand-Faced Shadow

Ninjutsu was built around a tempo swap: bounce an unblocked attacker, drop a ninja in its place, keep the damage step intact. This one bends that swap toward duplication. When it sneaks in attacking, its trigger copies another attacking creature, and the copy arrives tapped and attacking, so the same combat step that already had multiple bodies in motion suddenly has one more. The catch is structural: the ability requires another target attacking creature, which means you have to swing with a real board first. You cannot lead the turn with one threat, bounce it to fuel the ninja, and expect a token; the copy has nothing to point at unless a second attacker is still in the red zone. That constraint is what makes the card an engine piece rather than a solo threat. The best target is rarely a raw beater: it is a value creature whose enter-the-battlefield trigger you get to fire again, or a body whose stats you want doubled at the moment blockers are declared. Because the token slides in after combat is already joined, it arrives unblocked by default, and the 1/1 flier is cheap enough to slip onto the battlefield and evasive enough to reliably connect. What separates it from the older, purely tempo-minded ninjas is the ask: earlier designs wanted to trade up in stats, and this one wants to snapshot the best attacker you already committed. The payoff scales with the board you built, not with the ninja's modest frame.