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Tribal lords have always carried a tax: they are creatures, which means they die to the same removal that erases your other threats, and they cost color commitment that locks you into one wedge of the pie. This trades all of that away. By moving the +1/+1 anthem onto an artifact body, it pulls the lord effect out of combat-relevant range: it does not block, it does not get chumped, and it survives the sweepers that take your creatures with them. The mana ability is the second half of that bargain. A lord usually demands you build a manabase that supports a single color; here the card fixes any color it touches, so the same permanent that buffs the team also smooths whatever splash the deck wants. The cost of that flexibility is the choose-on-entry clause, which freezes the named type the moment it resolves and asks you to commit before you know how the game develops. That friction is what keeps a colorless anthem honest: the buff is locked in early, and the card offers no way to redirect it once the type is named. It is a lord for the player who would rather not run a lord: one that asks nothing of the color identity, contributes ramp on the turns the buff is irrelevant, and refuses to trade with the removal spells that fair tribal decks are forced to play around.




