Herald of Faith

The trigger reads as combat lifegain but pays out on the wrong side of the fight, and that decoupling is what gives the design its shape. Because the two life lands the instant you declare this Angel as an attacker, it arrives before blocks, before damage, before the body is exposed to anything. A chump block, a removal spell in response, even a full trade the following combat: none of it undoes the life already banked. That turns the swing into a dependable input for a lifegain engine, the kind of steady per-turn trigger that feeds payoffs sitting elsewhere on the board. It descends from a long line of white Angels that ask you to attack to extract value, but where many of those rewarded connecting, this one rewards only committing. The evasion is what keeps that commitment cheap: a 4/3 flyer sails over the ground clog that would eat a comparable creature on the dirt, so most turns the two life comes with four in the air attached, no trade required. The check on it is toughness rather than blockers: three points sits inside the range of common sweepers and burn, so the Angel rarely stays a threat long enough to carry a game on flying damage alone. That is acceptable, because attacking once has already fired the trigger the lifegain shell wants from it. Fixed as an engine input first and a clock second, plain about its function outside a deck built to convert life into pressure.