Tamiyo, Field Researcher
Four mana across the Bant shard, and the cost is paid in combat math rather than tempo. The plus ability draws no cards on its own; it marks up to two creatures and pays a card every time either deals combat damage until your next turn, which is where the design hides its real flexibility. Those creatures need not be yours, and they need not connect unblocked: a blocked attacker still deals combat damage, a blocker still deals combat damage, and either fills your hand. Point it at your own attackers, at your own blockers, or at an opponent's creatures and let their aggression draw your cards. That turns what reads as an aggressive engine into something that can sit behind a board and farm the other side's swings. The minus-two is the defensive valve: a soft double tap that locks two nonland permanents down and denies them their next untap, enough to strand a blocker, freeze a mana rock, or steal a turn against a threat. The ultimate folds its own setup into its payoff, drawing three cards and then handing over an emblem that casts your whole hand for free, so the dig and the gas arrive together. The honest tension sits well short of seven loyalty, in whether a planeswalker built to grind incremental cards out of combat can ever climb fast enough to cash that emblem in.





