Stonehoof Chieftain
Eight mana buys a blanket, not a finisher: for one attack step, every other creature you send in gains trample and indestructible. That reframes what the body is for. An 8/8 with trample and indestructible is a serviceable clock on its own, yet the trigger it hands the rest of your team is the actual sale, because it changes how your attackers survive a swing. Destruction-based removal and damage sweepers cast in response to your alpha strike stop killing your attackers once they cannot be destroyed, and trample means chump blockers no longer buy time for free: an unblocked-plus attacker still has to be blocked by something big enough to absorb its power, or the excess spills over. The catch lives in the trigger window. The buff fires only whenever another creature you control attacks, so it protects the swing and does nothing on defensive turns, and eight mana means the centaur lands late enough that the board it is meant to escort already exists. This is a payoff for the go-wide green deck that spent its early turns assembling bodies and now wants one card to convert that board into damage that survives the interaction on the stack. It does not generate the army; it commits it. Against green's long line of anthem-and-overrun closers, this one swaps the raw power boost for indestructibility, a form of protection that answers destruction and combat damage rather than exile, sacrifice, or a bounce spell held for the attack.



