Burning Shield Askari

A flanking creature that can buy its own first strike turns blocking into a problem with no good answer. Flanking already punishes the defender for committing anything that lacks the keyword: the blocker shrinks before damage, so smaller creatures die outright and larger ones trade down. The repeatable first-strike activation layers onto that. If a blocker survives the -1/-1, the Askari can still hit first, converting what looks like a clean trade into a one-sided kill. The cost structure is the discipline here. First strike runs off a double-red activation rather than a flat one, so the ability rewards a committed red board over a splash, and it gates the trick behind enough mana that you cannot always hold it up alongside everything else you want to do. Flanking was Mirage's attempt to make the offensive side of combat more rewarding without printing evasion outright, and this card is the keyword's logical endpoint: a creature whose entire pitch is that blocking it is a losing proposition. Most flanking creatures asked the defender to do the math once; this one keeps asking, because first strike lets the attacker change the answer mid-combat.