Bant Sojourners

The clever structural trick here is that the token payout is bolted to two opposite exits from the card. Whether you keep it or pitch it, you bank a 1/1 Soldier: cycle it for a token plus a fresh draw, or play the 2/4 body and leave a Soldier behind when it dies. That symmetry softens the regret a cycling creature usually carries. Most cards with cycling force a clean choice between a card now and a card later, and the discarded line quietly costs you a creature you might have wanted on the board; this one pays out either way, so there is no wrong line, only a more or less expensive one. The three-color identity is the tax on that flexibility, anchoring it inside a single shard rather than leaving it as splashable filler. As token generation it is unusually patient: most cycling cards reward the pitch and ask you to forget the card ever existed, while this one keeps banking value across the game's arc, accreting a small board whether or not you ever wanted it in hand. The 2/4 frame is deliberately defensive, sized to trade up or stall, the kind of body that sits in front of attackers rather than leading the charge, then leaves one more blocker behind on its way out.