Scion of Vitu-Ghazi
Populate has a chicken-and-egg problem baked into its rules: it copies a token you already control, so on an empty board it does nothing. This card resolves that dependence inside a single trigger by making the token first, then populating it. Hardcast it from your hand and a 1/1 white Bird with flying enters, then populate copies that Bird, so the floor is a 4/4 body plus two flyers with no setup required. The card supplies its own raw material, which is the cleanest way to fix populate's bootstrapping issue. The cast-from-hand condition is precise and worth noting: blinking it, reanimating it, or copying it produces a 4/4 and nothing else, so the value is locked to hardcasting. On a board already stocked with token-makers (a Wurm, an Angel, a squad of Knights), the populate half upgrades from a Bird to whatever your best token is, and that ceiling is where the card stops being a beater and starts being a payoff. The body is sized to play fair on its own while the trigger does the heavy lifting, a deliberate split that keeps the floor honest without requiring the populate target to already exist.
