Ingenious Leonin

Excess mana becomes a slow, aimed anthem here: each attack step, sinks into a single attacker and grows it with a counter that stays put after the turn ends, and if that attacker is a Cat it also swings with first strike for the turn. Gating the rider is what shapes the ability's texture. The counter lands on anything you're attacking with, but the first-strike bonus only fires on fellow Cats, so the activation doubles as a generic pump outlet in a pinch and a tribal payoff when the board cooperates. Permanence carries as much weight as the rider: even the swings where the target isn't a Cat leave a bigger threat standing rather than a spent trick fizzling, so the mana is never fully thrown away. Iteration is the leash. Paying per activation, it wants to fire once, maybe twice, in a game you already control, functioning less as a lever that pries open a stalled board and more as a reward for having gone wide with the tribe beforehand. In practice it's a mana-sink finisher for a white Cat aggro shell: a 4/4 that can close on its own, plus a repeatable way to push a single attacker through when the ground gums up.