Atarka's Command

Two modes out of four, every time, and the choice is what makes this a deckbuilder's spell rather than a burn spell. Aggressive red-green decks rarely picked the same pair twice: the lifegain-denial line plus the three-to-the-face was the burn package, turning off the fog of incidental lifegain while closing the door; the +1/+1-and-reach line plus the same three damage was the combat package, pushing a board through blockers and adding direct reach when the swing came up short. The land-drop mode is the quiet one, but it lets an aggressive deck deploy a turn ahead while doing something else relevant, which is a rate aggressive decks almost never get. The reach clause is the tell of when this was built: a pump spell that anticipates flyers blocking your ground creatures, written for an era thick with Dragons. What keeps the card honest is that "choose two" forces a real cost: you never get the burn and the pump and the land drop, so each cast is a wager on which axis the game is actually being decided. The lifegain-denial mode is the underrated one in the abstract, a maindeckable hate effect stapled to relevant rate, the kind of clause that quietly invalidates an opponent's stabilization plan without costing you a card. Few two-mana instants ask you to read the board this carefully before you point them.