Markov Baron

A Vampire lord with two cost-reduction and alternate-casting routes that reach for different board states, and reconciling them is the design's central puzzle. Convoke rewards a battlefield that is already crowded: tap a row of Vampires to defray the cost, converting a stalled aggro turn into a fresh body and an anthem for close to nothing (the +1/+1 buff, of course, only lands once the spell resolves and the lord joins the team, not while creatures are tapped to convoke it). Madness wants the mirror image, giving the card a line in decks that treat discard as a resource: a rummage or discard outlet lets you cast it off an empty hand at instant speed, dodging the sorcery-speed restriction a plain three-drop lives under. Lifelink and the tribal buff are the payoff that justifies both routes, keeping a 2/2 relevant on a bare board while rewarding a committed Vampire count. What makes it awkward to build around is that convoke wants bodies on the battlefield while madness wants a card in hand to discard, and few lords ask to be judged along both axes at once. In a deck leaning on neither, it settles into a serviceable creature with a modest anthem; the alternate costs only pay real dividends once a tribe has assembled the specific conditions each was written to exploit.