Herald of Anafenza

Outlast was a keyword built around a contradiction: a tap-to-grow ability that keeps the creature home and only fires at sorcery speed, so you trade an attack step for a single +1/+1 counter. Most cards with the keyword just accumulated counters and hoped the size mattered. This one converts the downside into a token engine. Every activation that bulks up the body also spits out a 1/1 Warrior, so the mana you sink into a slow grind buys board width on the side, and a tapped, otherwise-passive turn still leaves behind a body that can block, swing, or feed something hungry. That second clause is what makes the keyword pull double duty here: stapling a token to each activation means you are never just standing still while you pump. The Warriors stay relevant even after the counters have outscaled them, which quietly turns a one-drop into a repeatable engine rather than a creature you cast once and forget. The activation is the brake: it competes with your tap and your turn, so the engine runs at exactly the pace of a deck with nothing better to do with its mana. It is the rare outlast card whose ability is worth activating for reasons that have nothing to do with the counter it puts on itself.