I need a power level opinion. A friend says this is over powered, but when I look at cards like Fleecemane Lion and Loxodon Smiter this card looks weak to me. Yeah, it'll be strong in Commander when you don't have to choose the same opponent each upkeep, but in 1 v 1 this looks more like Akroan Horse to me. Your opponent gets a blocker the first turn and then gets more creatures to attack with on subsequent turns assuming you don't just sacrifice it after 3-4 turns of giving your opponent a lot of creatures.

Thoughts?

This is one of those odd cases where a fair casting cost might not be relevant. It is smart to consider the Lion and the Smiter when making this card... but there's something else involved. Most people enjoy playing those cards because they're simple and effective rares. Therefore, they're pushed. This creature, on the other hand, is only appealing to a segment of the Johnny subset. If this creature was pushed, and was 'as good' as Fleecemane Lion, you'd have a lot of very upset players on your hand who wouldn't want to play with this card, but would feel that they have to.

That said, I don't think this is unbalanced. To be honest, it reminds me of Sheltering Ancient, which had the bonus ability of trample, but also had the detriment that, "If no opponent controls a creature, you can't pay the upkeep and must sacrifice Sheltering Ancient." Cursed Priestess looks like a good card to me, but it needs another combo piece for it to be great/not terrible. That seems fair.

­Varchild's War-Riders was similar, but it had a combination of abilities that meant those tokens couldn't block it. Of course, it also wasn't as cheap or as big as this. This is more firmly in Johnny's camp, but I'm not sure how excited Johnny would be by a vanilla 5/5.

I don't think this is too powerful. I mean the tokens can actually overwhelm you.

Absolutely. I don't think it's too powerful; I question whether it's playable by anyone except a fairly small segment of Johnnies.