Steward of Solidarity

The exert mechanic was built around exactly this kind of trade: spend a turn's worth of activation now, sit the creature down for an extra untap step, and pay for the surplus with tempo rather than mana. Here the surplus is a steady drip of vigilant Warrior tokens, one per activation, free of any mana cost beyond the tap. The math is deliberately slow. Exert means the body produces a token every other turn at most, not every turn, so the engine never floods a board on its own; it asks for time the way a planeswalker asks for turns, paying out in attackers that can swing and still hold the line. What makes the token relevant is vigilance: each new Warrior contributes to the clock and the defense in the same motion, which is precisely what a go-wide deck wants from a creature that can't be everywhere at once. The 2/2 itself is incidental. This is a token factory dressed as a two-drop, and the whole design hinges on whether you can protect a fragile producer long enough for the exert tax to compound into a real army. Anthems and sacrifice payoffs are the natural homes; left to grind alone, it simply refuses to die fast enough to matter, which is its own kind of value.