Valiant Changeling

The seven-mana sticker price is fiction, and the mechanism that undoes it is more lopsided than a -off cap suggests. The reduction counts creature types among the creatures you control, so on a diverse board it shaves cost per unique tribe. But because a changeling body registers as all types simultaneously, a single Shapeshifter already on the battlefield hands the next copy the full discount by itself. No wide board required, no diverse one either: one all-typed creature down, and the following casting is a double-striking 3/3 for two. The tension sits in that gap between intent and exploit. The discount was written to reward the type-dense tribal battlefields the changeling keyword exists to populate, yet the keyword quietly lets each copy fuel the next once the first resolves. The hard reduction cap is what stops the discount from running away entirely, and the body keeps expectations grounded: even fully discounted you are buying a fragile 3/3, so the double strike is the only reason to bother, converting the frame into a six-damage swing the moment it connects unblocked. Watch the counting, though: it tallies distinct types, not bodies, so a dozen tokens sharing one type nudge the number once, while a handful of genuinely different creatures move it several steps. This is a rate card whose rate depends entirely on the shape of what you already have in play, engineered to cash a varied board into a cheap, hard-hitting closer.