Aven Warcraft

The toughness pump is the part everyone forgets, because it does almost nothing on its own: +0/+2 across a board rarely swings a combat the way a power boost would. The threshold half is where the card earns its name. Once seven cards sit in the yard, the spell converts from a soft defensive blanket into a board-wide protection effect aimed at whatever color is trying to kill you. Protection, though, is a precise tool, not a universal shield: it stops damage, blocking, enchanting and equipping, and targeting, which means it neuters a targeted removal spell, blanks a damage-based sweeper if you call the right color, or waves your whole team past blockers by giving them protection from the defending color. What it does not do is answer a destroy-all or exile-all effect that never targets; calling a color against that kind of wrath leaves your creatures dying anyway. The toughness bump is the consolation for casting it early, before the graveyard fills, so the card never reads as a dead draw in the opening turns. It comes from a design conversation that treated graveyard count as a resource, where spells quietly upgraded mid-game without asking for extra mana or a second card. The instant timing does real work: protection assigned at the right point on the stack pulls a creature out of a removal spell's targeting or prevents combat damage from the chosen color after blocks, and this hands that out to your entire side at once. Threshold is the line between the floor and the ceiling.