Gandalf, Friend of the Shire
Flash on a 2/4 that never wanted to attack anyway tells you the plan is patience, and the middle line is where the card earns its keep: casting sorceries as though they had flash rewires the tempo of a control shell entirely. Board wipes on the end step, ramp held until an opponent taps out, a game-ending sorcery landing in the window an opponent thought was safe: the ability erases the difference between sorcery and instant speed for every sorcery you cast, a larger structural change than one line suggests. The Ring clause is the wrinkle that makes the wizard care about who else is on the board. Rather than putting itself forward as the Ring-bearer, this Gandalf profits when a smaller creature carries the burden, turning the tempt trigger into a repeatable draw off a chump. That is a deliberate inversion of how most Ring-bearer designs read: the usual instinct is to send the legend out front to absorb the temptation, and this one is built to keep the crown on someone lesser so the wizard can draw while it sits back. The defensive body is the point, a blocker that survives early aggression and holds the fort while the flash-sorcery ability does the real work across a long game. It rewards a deck that treats every turn as an open window, asking only that you keep a disposable creature around to wear the Ring.
