Sally Pride, Lioness Leader

Five mana for a 2/4 that makes one token and grows itself next turn is the floor, and that floor alone clears the maindeck bar in a medium-speed format. The realistic case is why this is the defining bomb of the set. TMT commons sit at 2/2 and 2/3 rates with one to two removal spells per color, which means boards in the four-to-seven-turn window routinely stall at three or four creatures a side. Resolving her on that board makes four or five bodies, then the attack trigger puts a counter on every one of them, including the freshly-minted 2/2s. No common in the format profitably blocks the result.

She is P1P1 in any white seat and a splash worth bending a second color toward. RW Equipment and WB go-wide are her homes, and they want her for different reasons. WB treats her as the engine that converts a stalled board into lethal reach; RW treats her as the finisher that turns a curve that has run out of gas back into damage, with Bespoke Bō on a counter-pumped body closing fast.

The honest read on her fragility is narrower than it looks. Killing her in response to the enters trigger does shrink the token count: X is counted on resolution, so if she is gone she does not count herself, and you get one fewer 2/2 (zero if she was alone). But once she has attacked, removal is too late. Grounded for Life can kill her after attackers are declared, but the counter trigger is already on the stack and resolves anyway. The window that actually matters is killing her before she swings, and the format's medium removal density does not guarantee anyone has it in time.

The double-payoff is the whole pitch: cast Sally Pride into a board of four nontoken creatures and she enters as the fifth, so the trigger counts five and makes five 2/2 Mutants for a board of ten. The next combat then drops a +1/+1 counter on all of them, tokens included. That is a go-wide curve-topper for white token decks, and it lives in the 99 rather than the command zone.

Jetmir, Nexus of Revels is the cleanest fit: one five-mana cast floods the board and shoves a wide team past his attack-trigger thresholds in a single swing. Adeline, Resplendent Cathar wants the shared anthem-on-attack plan too, with a caveat worth stating plainly. Her own attack trigger spawns tokens, and tokens do not count toward Sally Pride's entry trigger, which reads nontoken creatures. The synergy is the combat anthem, not the token count.

This is a Bracket 2-3 card. The body is too slow and removal-prone for Bracket 4-5 token shells, where the board-pump slot already belongs to Cathars' Crusade, and a five-mana sorcery-speed payoff is a non-starter in cEDH. Against Crusade, the comparison is shape, not cost: both run , but Crusade scales on every creature cast across the whole game while Sally Pride front-loads, dumping tokens on entry and pumping once per swing. Crusade is the higher ceiling in a deck that floods repeatedly; Sally Pride is the proactive line that does its work the turn it lands.

Expect her in the sub-$5 to $5-15 range as the printing settles. The multiplayer read is real: a wide-board attack invites the table's sweeper and draws kingmaker accusations. Killing her in response to the attack trigger saves no one, since the trigger still resolves and the rest of the board still takes counters. She is invisible in voltron, spellslinger, or any non-creature plan, which is most non-token tables.

A five-mana go-wide payoff for white token decks, which is a deck Modern does not actually field at a competitive level. The closest real homes are Lingering Souls shells and the various white creature lists, but five mana for a creature that needs a board already in place and survives a turn to attack is two turns too slow for the format. Hero of Bladehold does a faster version of the same job at four mana and still does not see play. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play, and nothing about the rate suggests that changes.

Legal in Standard since its March 2026 printing, but yet to register in any tracked tournament deck this season. The structural problem is the one the design invites: five mana for a payoff that does nothing the turn it lands unless you have already committed a wide board, and a 2/4 body that any removal spell answers before the attack trigger ever distributes a counter. White go-wide decks in the current format would rather spend turn five attacking than building toward a second go-wide threat, and the aggressive shells that could feed Sally Pride's token math want their five-drops to close, not to set up another combat step. The card asks an opponent to have no answer to a 2/4 across two full turns, which is a lot to ask in a format with cheap, flexible removal. It is the modern Hero of Bladehold problem, scaled up and priced accordingly: a haymaker that wins games it survives in and accomplishes nothing in the ones it does not.

Rotation is distant. As a March 2026 card, Sally Pride stays Standard-legal through the 2028 rotation cycle, well past the point where its current would-be partners leave the format. Nothing on the announced schedule gives white go-wide the cheap, sticky threats that would make a turn-five token engine worth the tempo, but the pool turns over constantly, and a single aggressive anthem printing could change the math before rotation ever becomes the relevant horizon.

A five-mana go-wide payoff for a white token deck that does not really exist in Pioneer, where the format's anthem-and-tokens shells lean on cheaper, faster engines. The problem is the same one the identity blurb names: by turn five the opponent has had four turns to find a sweeper, and a 2/4 that gets removed before it attacks leaves a pile of base-size 2/2s with no counters. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play, and there is no current archetype asking for it. Binder filler in this format.

A five-mana white go-wide payoff in a format where Black Lotus and two Moxen put three-plus mana on the table turn zero. Casting it on curve means tapping out into a 2/4 that dies to any instant-speed removal before the attack trigger ever fires, and even when it lands it does nothing for the Workshops, Bazaar, or blue-tempo equilibria Vintage runs on. There is no creature-flood deck here for it to anchor. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play. Noise.

A five-mana white go-wide payoff in a format where Swords to Plowshares exiles the 2/4 for one mana before the attack trigger ever fires, and Force of Will answers it for free on the way in. The token math only matters if the board survives to the next combat step, and Legacy's removal does not give you that step: a single removal spell strands the mutants at base size, and the format's sweepers clear them after. Five mana also pays the Force of Will tax in the worst way, since white token strategies do not exist at a tier-one level here to begin with. The closest Legacy white aggro is Death and Taxes, which wants Thalia, Guardian of Thaben and Stoneforge Mystic at one and two mana, not a top-end haymaker that does nothing the turn it lands. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play. Does not clear the bar.