Thraben Valiant

A 2/1 with vigilance for two mana has exactly one job: press damage every turn without ever giving up the block. That is the entire pitch, and it resolves the oldest tension in small white aggression, the choice between attacking and holding the ground. Here there is no choice. Cast on turn two, it swings on your third turn and is still untapped to block on the opponent's. The cost is paid in fragility: one toughness means it trades down into most early blockers and dies, so its defensive presence is real on offense (it stays home while attacking) but thin on actual defense, and a single point of reach or any one-toughness sweeper erases it. The power line is low enough that it stops mattering once the curve climbs past two. So this is foundation, not payoff: vigilance on a small Human Soldier is a clean, low-rate keyword grafted onto a body whose only ambition is to keep applying pressure while contributing to the board state. It is the unglamorous part of a curve, the rate-correct two-drop that exists so the splashier cards above it have something to attack alongside.