Baird, Argivian Recruiter
The trigger reads like a Boros aggro payoff, but its condition is what makes it a puzzle: it wants a creature whose power exceeds its base power, meaning something has to be actively pumped, not merely printed large. A stacked counter satisfies it, a temporary combat buff satisfies it, an anthem or aura satisfies it, but a vanilla 4/4 sitting in play does nothing. That distinction turns this legend into a rewards mechanism for exactly the kind of deck that goes wide and then goes tall: adventuring parties, counter shells, the aggressive builds that were already tapping out to buff a threat. Each of your end steps you have met the condition, another body walks in, and those bodies are themselves valid pump targets, so the engine can compound on itself once the deck is built to feed it. The design tension is real: the reward is only worth chasing if you were going to pump creatures anyway, which keeps a two-mana token-generating legend from being a free include in any Boros pile. It asks you to commit to a plan, then pays that plan a soldier a turn.


