Shaman of Forgotten Ways

The mana ability is the honest half: a creature-only ramp engine in the lineage of Somberwald Sage, restricted so the two mana it produces can pour into nothing but more bodies. That restriction is the point. It builds toward the board state that switches the second ability on. The Formidable cost is where the design turns strange. Once your creatures total eight power, eleven mana and a tap set every player's life total to the number of creatures they control: a rare symmetrical effect that a creature-heavy green deck breaks wide open. You are flooded with bodies while an opponent who spent the game holding cards lands at one or two. It is board-state-as-life-total, Biorhythm folded into a 2/3 Human Shaman frame. The tension is internal and self-resolving: the same go-wide plan that clears the eight-power threshold also stocks your side with the creatures that decide the new life total. The eleven-mana price keeps the button off the early turns, and the ramp cannot press it (that restricted mana casts creature spells only, never activates abilities), so the two halves stay honest about their division of labor. The Shaman pours mana into a wider board; the wider board is what makes the Formidable line lethal. Ramp and payoff live in one card so that the mana engine is never dead weight while you assemble the rest.