Battle Cry

The interesting verb here is the first one, not the second: untap. Most pump effects spend a card to push power through; this one stands your tapped white creatures back up, then offers a defensive bump to anything that blocks. That untap clause is the engine. Cast it in your own combat to free up creatures tapped for other reasons, or hold it to ambush an opponent who declared an attack into what they read as a tapped-out board. The second line is symmetric in the way early Magic often was, handing +0/+1 to every creature that blocks that turn, yours or theirs, so the value tilts toward whoever has more bodies left to block with. Strategically it works as a tempo correction rather than a finisher: a way to redo the math of an attack step after attacks are declared, converting an open board into a wall mid-combat. The untap-on-defense template was a live design lever in this era, and Magic mostly retired it once vigilance and flash creatures folded the same effect into permanents instead of spending a whole card to do it once. The card endures as a record of when surprise blocking cost you a full card and instant-speed untapping was an idea designers still reached for directly.