Noble Templar

Every cycling creature lives a double life: a body you might cast, a fetch you discard when the draw goes wrong. The split is the bargain, and this one tilts it toward the back half. Plainscycling for is cheap enough that a mana-screwed hand can pitch a six-mana creature it could never afford and search up the white source it actually needs, smoothing the curve without burning a real card slot, the cycled creature heading to the graveyard rather than back into the deck. But the front half is no afterthought. A 3/6 with vigilance is a genuine wall, and arriving late means it arrives precisely when stabilizing matters: durable enough to brick a midgame attack while still threatening to swing back, the vigilance letting it press the counterattack without surrendering its job on defense. That toughness is what keeps it worth hardcasting once the lands have shown up. The choice resolves itself off the board in front of you: short on white sources, cash it for fixing; flush with mana and staring down attackers, drop it as a roadblock. That dual identity is the entire reason a creature this plain on the front earns a deck slot it would never earn on stats alone. Almost no game state strands it as a dead card; either you wanted the land or you wanted the wall, and the discard clause means the two halves never compete for the same draw step.