Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward

The blink here runs in reverse from the usual white flicker. Standard flicker exiles a permanent to reset its enters-the-battlefield trigger and returns it moments later; here the exile is the cost paid up front, and the payout resolves the instant he arrives, one 1/1 Soldier for each permanent you tuck away. The permanents themselves stay in exile until he leaves, so the transaction is front-loaded: you decide on his entry how much of your board to convert, and you get the bodies immediately, not on his death. That framing exposes the asymmetry the design lives on. The exile grabs indiscriminately, but the token payout is strictly one-for-one, so wide boards of cheap permanents feed him well while a lone engine artifact trades a whole card for a single Soldier, a bad rate unless you specifically wanted that permanent gone and reusable. Choose a Background lets you bolt a second command-zone permanent onto the plan, giving the Soldier-generation engine a partner it would otherwise lack. The sacrifice-outlet interaction is where it turns dangerous: with a way to remove him at will, his leaving the battlefield returns everything still in exile all at once, so the exiled permanents come flooding back with their own entry triggers firing again. He is a valve you can open on command, converting a board into tokens now and reloading the originals later.