Munda's Vanguard

Most Cohort abilities cash out once and stop: a creature grows, an opponent discards, you gain a little life. This one scales with the board it sits on, dropping a +1/+1 counter on every creature you control the moment you press the button. The wider you already are, the more each activation buys, and because the counters are permanent, the arithmetic compounds across turns rather than fading like a combat trick. A surviving board gets bigger every cycle until the anthem stops being incremental value and starts being inevitability. The cost is where the tension lives: the activation taps this Vanguard plus another untapped Ally, pulling two bodies out of combat the turn you fire it, so the counters are a forward investment you pay for now and collect on later. That trade is what keeps the engine from being oppressive. A go-wide payoff that grew every creature at no cost would break open every board it touched; forcing you to sideline two attackers turns each activation into a real decision about whether to swing or to build. The 3/3 for five mana reads as filler on purpose, because the stats are beside the point; what you are buying is a repeatable, board-wide grow that converts a pile of small Ally creatures into a lethal army without ever casting another spell.