Ardyn, the Usurper

The combat trigger is the whole machine, and its timing is what makes the graveyard-recursion engine sidestep the tempo lag that dogs most reanimation. Because the trigger fires at the beginning of combat on your turn, the 5/5 black Demon token arrives with an attack step still ahead of it, and the anthem overhead grants every Demon you control haste, so the fresh copy swings the same turn it is minted. What you are harvesting is the copied card's printed text on a new body: enters-the-battlefield effects, activated abilities, and static abilities all carry over, while cast-only triggers stay dormant because the token is created directly onto the battlefield rather than cast. The token inherits everything except its stats and type, so a copied evasive creature keeps its evasion, but the anthem itself supplies only menace, lifelink, and haste; nothing here hands out flying unless the exiled card already carried it. Copy a creature with a punishing enters-the-battlefield effect or a repeatable activated ability and each combat step becomes a fresh 5/5 with menace, lifelink, and a mining operation attached. The gate is fuel, not clock: fill and mine a graveyard first, and the only question left is whether it holds a creature card worth wearing a Demon's frame. It converts stocked material into a life-draining, hard-to-block army one attacker at a time, on the exact instinct black has always rewarded.