Minthara has ward , where X is the number of experience counters you have.
At the beginning of your end step, if a permanent you controlled left the battlefield this turn, you get an experience counter.
Creatures you control get +1/+0 for each experience counter you have.
Sacrifice or trade away your own permanents every turn to bank experience counters, which simultaneously make Minthara harder to kill (ward) and turn your whole board into an escalating beatdown engine (+1/+0 per counter). You play a token/aristocrats shell that generates expendable bodies, then go wide and swing for lethal once counters pile up.
Experience counters are permanent and survive board wipes, so your anthem and ward only grow over the game
Ward makes Minthara increasingly hard to remove without resorting to sacrifice/edict effects
Rewards sacrifice synergies you'd already want in Aristocrats, doubling as both incidental value and a wincon
Goes wide AND tall—turns a swarm of 1/1 tokens into a genuine lethal threat
Only +1/+0 with no toughness boost, so tokens stay fragile and X/1 creatures die easily
Slow to come online—needs several turns of permanents leaving play before the buff is meaningful
Edict and sacrifice effects bypass ward entirely, and board wipes still kill the team (just not the counters)
Heavily commander-dependent; without Minthara the experience counters do nothing
Vulnerable to graveyard/sacrifice hate and to removal in response before counters accumulate
With a stack of counters and a wide board, you can convert experience into massive double-strike-adjacent damage spikes—pairs with anthem to close games fast.
Legendary Creature — Elf Cleric
, where X is the number of experience counters you have.