Valkyrie's Sword

The oldest problem with Equipment is that a sword is dead on an empty board, and this one writes its own escape hatch into the enters trigger. Pay the extra and a 4/4 white Angel Warrior with flying and vigilance arrives already wearing the buff, resolving into a 6/5 flyer for across the two payments. Decline it and you have a cheap +2/+1 to hang on whatever you already control, deployed for and equipped later for . That elasticity is the appeal: the card scales to the state of the game rather than demanding a specific one. Late, when your creatures have been picked off, it rebuilds a board on its own; early, it sits as a modest artifact waiting for a target. The vigilance on the token is what keeps the expensive mode from being a trap, since a 6/5 that attacks without dropping its guard is a real threat rather than a fragile one-shot finisher. The design trick is that the token cost is paid once, on entry, not as a repeatable ability: you commit a single time and are left with a permanent that outlives the Angel and re-equips onto the next creature. It answers both "I have no creatures" and "I want to buff the one I have" without forcing that choice at deckbuilding time, a tidier resolution of the tension than most Equipment of this rate manage.