Wild Aesthir

A flyer with first strike already wins most aerial duels it walks into, but the design here is about closing the gap between a 1/1 and a real clock without committing to it on cast. The double-white pump is a combat-step lever: it stays a tiny evasive body until you have white to spare, then becomes a 3/1 first striker that trades up against bigger flyers and forces hard blocks on defense. Pairing first strike with a power boost is the key interaction; the +2/+0 lands before damage is dealt, so the creature swings as a 3-power first striker and kills most things it crosses without taking a scratch back. The once-each-turn clause is what holds the rate in check: the mana investment caps at exactly per turn, so this never becomes a sink that swallows a flooded hand for one oversized swing. The body grows by a fixed increment and no more, which keeps the clock predictable rather than explosive and stops the activation from spiraling. It is a clean piece of mid-90s white aggro thinking, when evasion plus a pump outlet was a respectable way to spend a couple of extra mana each turn, and the Bird type gives it a small tribal hook that later sets would lean on harder than this card ever needed.