Ajani's Influence

Two +1/+1 counters plus a top-five dig for white gas, stapled together and both paid at once, because the spell fires both halves every time it resolves. That cumulative structure is why it costs four: neither effect could carry a four-mana sorcery alone, so the design leans on the sum. The trouble is that the sum rarely wants to happen. A combat buff you cannot hold up as a surprise blocker-trade is a weak combat buff, and a dig that finds only white cards (and only when one sits in the top five) is narrow filtering. The instinct on display is an old one: make a creature-buff feel worth a full card by bolting selection onto it, the same reflex behind a run of mid-era white spells that married a small board effect to a small library effect. What sinks it is that the two halves almost never share a turn. You seldom need to grow a creature and refuel in the same breath, so on most turns one half does real work and the other is a tax you paid anyway. That tension, two reasonable effects that do not want the same moment, is the card's defining feature. The counters give it a faint pull wherever +1/+1 counters matter as a build-around theme, but the spell asks four mana to do two things halfway and commit to neither.