Nissa, Steward of Elements
The X in the casting cost is doing double duty, and that is the whole mechanical premise. You decide how much loyalty this planeswalker enters with, which means the moment you pay for it you are also setting the ceiling on its 0-ability. That middle ability is a soft, repeatable cheat: it does not draw a card or even hand you the information first past a peek. You look at the top of your library, and only if it is a land or a creature whose mana value fits under the current loyalty count may it fall straight onto the battlefield. Cast it small and you are trickling one-drops and lands into play a card at a time; let the loyalty climb on the +2 (which just digs with Scry 2 while it waits) and the threshold rises to let bigger creatures slip through. That escalating ceiling is the governor on the whole design: the cheat is always priced against the loyalty you spent the turns building. The ultimate rewards survival, animating two lands into hasty flying Elementals rather than handing the pilot a one-shot build-around win. What sets this apart from most Simic planeswalkers is how much of its power is fixed at the instant of casting rather than ticked toward across turns. A scalable entry point on a permanent that then advances itself is a quietly math-forward design, asking the pilot to read their own curve and the cards waiting in the deck before the spell ever resolves.
