Elspeth, Undaunted Hero
Every prior Elspeth ticked up by making a body or protecting one: Elspeth, Knight-Errant minted a 1/1, Elspeth, Sun's Champion built a whole army. This one hands out counters to creatures already on the board, which quietly reorients her around a battlefield you have to build first rather than one she populates herself. That dependency cuts both ways: unlike planeswalkers that generate their own defenders, she has nothing to point the plus at on an empty board, which makes her uniquely fragile the moment you fall behind. The minus-two is the strangest line on any Elspeth to date: rather than an emblem or a token, it tutors a single named creature, Sunlit Hoplite, straight onto the battlefield from library or graveyard. That is a planeswalker that assumes a companion card, a design that only pays off if you have run the pair together. Her ultimate is the throwback: an anthem-plus-flying finisher scaled to devotion to white, so the reward for a wide white board is the same math that powered the color's older devotion payoffs. Read the three abilities together and the intent is clear: she is not a standalone value engine but the linchpin of a go-wide white deck leaning on permanents rather than spells, converting a board presence into counters, a specific threat, and a lethal alpha strike. She protects herself only insofar as the board does; hand her nothing to work with and the loyalty just idles.
