Patron of the Valiant

The enter trigger is a payoff dressed as a flier: it does nothing where no counters already sit, then fans a single burst across every creature you've spent earlier turns growing. The whole pitch rests on that setup. A 4/4 flier for five mana is a fair body on its own, but the design wants the deckbuilder to have done the work first; the Angel arrives to collect on it, turning a row of modest counter-bearers into something closer to a finish. It sits in the white +1/+1 counters lineage alongside payoffs like Cathars' Crusade, with one structural difference: this is a one-shot multiplier, not a standing engine, so the value tops out the moment it resolves rather than compounding each combat. Flying does more work than the trigger headline suggests. It hands a counter-stacked board an evasive carrier while the rest of the team grinds on the ground, and it gives you a respectable defensive flier in games where the counter plan never came together. That last point is the honest read on the card: stranded without a developed board, it is still a 4/4 flier with a triggered ability that simply finds nothing to do, not a blank. The ceiling is high and entirely self-determined; how high depends on how committed the surrounding deck is to manufacturing counters before the Angel shows up.