Esquire of the King

The anthem here is priced twice, and the discount is the entire pitch. Untapped and alone, this is a one-drop that wants five mana to pump the team once: a rate no aggressive deck would pay. The moment you control a legendary creature, the activation drops to three, and the card starts making sense as a repeatable combat engine that widens a board rather than a single body on it. That conditional is the design admitting the card is filler in one shell and a payoff in another; it points squarely at the legendary-matters build, where enough legendary creatures crowd the battlefield to keep the toll low turn after turn. Note the wording carefully: the discount reads legendary creature, not simply a legendary permanent, so a lone planeswalker or legendary artifact does nothing for the price. The tap symbol is the quiet limiter that keeps the loop honest: this Soldier cannot attack and pump in the same turn without vigilance from somewhere, so the effect is a support piece feeding a wider strategy, not a self-sufficient threat. Set against the long line of white anthem-on-a-stick designs (the "make my board bigger" static lords), this one trades a passive bonus for an activated one gated behind a build-around condition, which is why it reads as a common-rarity reward rather than a staple.