Protest all you want, but we all shared in that special joy when Akroma, Angel of Wrath was first printed. It was really a precedent set by Spirit of the Night, and other creatures such as Sphinx of the Steel Wind followed in their footsteps - simpletons that we are, we love creatures that are a big stack of abilities.
Of course, having a creature that fearsome in combat and that hard to kill necessitates something of an exorbitant mana cost, and it's unlikely to see play outside of reanimation effects - in which case you might be better off with something truly oppressive, like Iona. So how do we accomplish something similar?
Well, there are a number of "Akroma lite" creatures, with a decent handful of abilities on a smaller body for a commensurately smaller cost. Kjeldoran Skyknight, Vampire Nighthawk, and the more recent Aerial Responder all have three helpful combat abilities but won't set you back more than three mana for your trouble. Pumping one of said creatures up will leave you with a fearsome combatant, but is three abilities really enough? That's only a starting point, if you ask me!
Thankfully, throughout Magic's history there have been a number of cards that allow you to pile abilities from multiple sources onto a single creature, letting several Akroma lite-types Voltron together into a truly fearsome foe - or better yet, all share in the glory of each other's tasty keywords. With the reveal of the most recent member of this exclusive club, the Majestic Myriarch, here then is a chart detailing the various cards that let you combine abilities as well as which ones they have access to.
| Death-Mask Duplicant | Concerted Effort | Cairn Wanderer | Odric, Lunarch Marshal | Soulflayer | Animus of Predation | Majestic Myriarch | |
| Flying | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Fear | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| First Strike | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Double Strike | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Landwalk | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| Protection | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| Trample | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Vigilance | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Deathtouch | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Haste | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Hexproof | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| Indestructible | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| Lifelink | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Menace | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| Reach | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Skulk | ✓ | ||||||
| Shroud | ✓ |
It's interesting to see the overlap, as well as the timeliness of a card displaying which keyword abilities were in favour at what time. Only the three oldest examples have access to Protection, Landwalk or Fear, for instance, but every card listed can pick up Flying, First Strike or Double Strike. Cairn Wanderer is unique in being able to pick up Shroud, and only Odric can share his knowledge of Skulk.
Get Where The Gettin's Good
Seeing what cards can get which abilities is handy, but knowing where to get those abilities is the second half of the problem. Throwing a Coiled Tinviper onto the field and calling it a day isn't going to cut it. This is by no means an exhaustive (or even particularly insightful) list, but it hopefully is somewhat helpful by providing three categories of support cards - those with as many abilities as possible; those with multiple abilities for cheap; and those that are a cheap source of a particularly powerful or unusual ability.
Keep in mind that which creatures listed being appropriate with which cards is going to be a matter of consideration. For instance, Cairn Wanderer can inherit every single ability that Akroma has, whereas Animus of Predation would miss out on Trample and the Protections. Even more dramatically, Etched Champion is a gamewinner with Concerted Effort but useless to Soulflayer!
All-You-Can-Eat
These are the cards that are an army in a can, with more abilities to their name than three or four creatures might have combined.
Playfully referred to as "Akroma lite" earlier, these are the creatures who will have as many abilities as you could expect to find for two or three mana.
Rare and powerful abilities that might seem unimpressive on a tiny body make for good fodder to be loaned out.
So what to do with this knowledge? You can't really use them all in one deck, I'll tell you that much. Most of them want their ability pinatas in a different place (in play, in the graveyard, in the graveyard to be eaten, in exile, in your draft leftovers etc.) so you can really only use one at a time, maybe two, depending on how well they work together. I have designed, then, a handful of decks for three different formats, showcasing what you can accomplish with some of these cards in a deckbuilding sense.
Concerted Effort - technically the second card to explore this effect, but it feels like the first from a build-around perspective, since there's not much to be gained building around a Death-Mask Duplicant. The Effort, meanwhile, can spread the abilities from one creature to your entire army - and if each member brings something to the table, then you can have a fearsome horde indeed. Having evolved from being red-green-white, to green and white, to finally mono-white, this deck seeks to combine useful abilities from tiny creatures onto a single good-sized recipient, in this case the Baneslayer Angel, who brings some handy keywords of her own to the mix. In particular, it tries to capitalize on the usefulness of Protections, which later cards phased out - the Beloved Chaplain's Protection from Creatures makes your army unblockable as well as consummate blockers, and the Mistmeadow Skulk's Protection from CMC 3 or greater can hold off a surprising amount of removal and interaction from your opponent. Of course, only having one useful attacker might feel like a waste, so Angel of Jubilation and Honor of the Pure are there to buff your weenies up a little, making them useful attackers in their own right.
Team Odric - this time experimenting with an EDH deck, Odric, Lunarch Marshal exists as a sort of Concerted Effort 2.0. He grants a greater range of abilities to your army - including tasty offerings like Hexproof and Indestructibility - but seeing as it's only as of combat each turn, even Sorcery-speed removal will still have a clean shot at any of your creatures. Still, being a commander means you have reliable access to his ability every game, and even mono-white has no shortage of ability-laden beasties to spread the love. An equipment subtheme is well-supported by the colour, of course, but Odric also allows you to turn the abilities of an equipment from a gift for one to a gift for many - Chariot of Victory, Haunted Cloak and Sword of Vengeance become a lot more exciting when their abilities extend to every creature you control.
Ability Salad - the most recent example and borrowing the article's namesake, I did what I almost never do with this instance and actually designed a Standard-legal deck. (Standard for the next week, technically. But it still counts!) Both Odric and Majestic Myriarch are legal together for this short window, so there's a respectable amount of redundancy in your deck's goal. There's also no shortage of useful abilities on hand, with Aerial Responder, Angel of Invention and Gisela, the Broken Blade providing three abilities apiece. Most interesting is perhaps Cat Mom-er, Oketra the True, who gives Double Strike and Indestructibility to your other creatures even if she herself can't attack. Of course, the creature-producing ability comes in handy as well, seeing as any little weenie your field will get abilities from Odric and directly contribute to the size of your Myriarch. Likewise, Oketra's Monument, Oviya Pashiri and Westvale Abbey help reinforce your ranks.
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