Ajani's Presence

At one mana for the first target, this is among the cheapest ways to staple indestructible onto a creature in response to a Lightning Bolt, a Wrath of God, or an unfavorable block, with the +1/+1 a quiet rider that occasionally pushes a damage race or shrugs off a -1/-1 effect. The real design lever is strive: the floor is a single combat trick that protects one creature, but the spell scales as wide as your mana allows, turning a board-wide alpha strike into a team you can run into anything with impunity. That tension gives the card its split personality. As a one-mana protection spell it is reactive insurance, played at instant speed to keep a key creature through a removal answer or a sweeper; at four, seven, or ten total mana for two, three, or four targets, it becomes a proactive haymaker that can win on the spot, rewarding a flooded board the way a fog rewards a desperate defense. Strive cards live or die on how punishing the per-target tax is, and the step keeps the multi-target mode honest: each extra creature costs as much as a real spell, so going wide is a deliberate commitment rather than a free upgrade. What makes the design durable is that the worst case is still a serviceable single-target protection spell in the Gods Willing mold, while the best case is a one-card answer that flips a stalled board into a lethal swing.