Ronin Cavekeeper

Bushido was a clever bit of design: a keyword that pays its bearer only in combat, which means a card's printed body is a deliberate undersell of what it actually fights at. The trouble here is the arithmetic. The base body asks for six mana, and the +2/+2 only materializes the moment the creature blocks or gets blocked, landing it at a 6/5 in a fight. That is a perfectly good size to win a trade, but six mana for a creature that does nothing until combat happens is a rate set well behind the curve, even by the standards of the era's red beaters. The deeper friction is structural: bushido's surprise math leans defensive, since the bonus rewards a creature standing on the ground waiting to block, while red wants its threats to be ahead on the board and pressing the attack, not sitting in front of the red zone hoping someone runs into it. The samurai who got remembered from this stretch were the ones whose bushido sat on a cheaper frame or paired with an evasive keyword, where the hidden combat bonus actually altered who came out ahead. This one is honest about what it is: a heavy late-game beater whose only real argument is the body it brings to a fight, on a creature type and a mechanic that wanted to be doing this two or three mana sooner.