Zhalfirin Knight

Flanking already does the hard part: a defending creature without the keyword shrinks the moment it commits to the block, so a 2/2 blocker becomes a 1/1 before damage is even assigned. What lifts this Knight above a plain flanking common is the clause, which converts that -1/-1 from a deterrent into a one-sided trade. Give the Knight first strike, attack into a 2/2, and the blocker takes its -1/-1, then eats first-strike damage as a 1/1 before it can swing back. The blocker dies; the Knight walks away. That two-card combat interaction lives on a single body, and the activation cost holds it in check: two white pips is steep enough that the first-strike line is a deliberate mana investment rather than a free win, and since first strike does not stack, there is nothing to gain from activating it twice. The keyword belonged to the Mirage-era white Knight tradition, where it handed small attackers an asymmetric edge in the red zone against the ground stalls of its day. This is the workmanlike take on that design: a vanilla-sized frame whose entire pitch is making attacks profitable that an ordinary 2/2 could never survive, with the first-strike activation as the upgrade that turns the keyword's punishment into a clean kill when you have the white to spend.