Zariel, Archduke of Avernus
The +1 that hands your whole board +1/+0 and haste reads like a stock aggro anthem until you notice what it feeds: the ultimate grants an additional combat phase every turn, and its untap clause means your best attacker connects twice. This is a planeswalker built as a finisher for a go-wide red deck that is already ahead, not a value engine that stabilizes a losing board. The zero-loyalty Devil tokens are the tell: they cost no loyalty, so you can hold the walker steady while widening the swarm, and each carries a death ping that turns chump blocks into reach and forces defenders into bad math. The whole kit points one direction: attack, add bodies that punish blocking, then buy the second combat phase to close before the opponent untaps. Zariel commits to the Avernus flavor of relentless martial pressure by refusing to play defense at all. There is no minus that removes a threat, no line that gains life or draws a card. Every ability advances the assault, which makes the loyalty arithmetic unusually honest: you protect this walker by killing the opponent, not by ticking up toward some safe number. It is one-directional pressure with no fallback if the beatdown stalls, and that austerity is the point.
