Ajani Steadfast

The +1 here is doing quiet, unusual work for a planeswalker pump effect. Stacking first strike, vigilance, and lifelink onto a single creature alongside +1/+1 turns one attacker into a lifegain engine that survives the combat it starts: it strikes first, stays untapped to block, and drains life on every point it deals. That bundle is built for a board, not a single threat, which is why the -2 reads less like a sweeper-survival button and more like a multiplayer escalation: a +1/+1 counter on everything you control, plus a loyalty counter on each other planeswalker, so the Ajani that wants company on the battlefield gets rewarded for bringing it. The design tension is that the ultimate has almost nothing to do with the rest of the kit. The emblem is pure damage prevention, a defensive lock that protects you and your other walkers down to a single point per source, and getting there asks you to lean on the +1's steady loyalty gain rather than spending down toward the -2. So the card pulls in two directions at once: a go-wide team buff on the -2, and a long-game fortress reached by the loyalty-positive line. White planeswalkers built around anthem-and-counter synergy tend to circle this same space, and this one packages the team buff, the per-walker subsidy, and the damage shield into a four-loyalty body that almost never wants to spend its ability on a lone creature.