Briarhorn

The pump spell that pretends to be a creature, then is one. The whole strategic axis is the question evoke lets you defer until cast: do I need a trick now, or a flash blocker later? For it's an instant-speed +3/+3 that dies on entry, which makes it cost more than a bare combat trick like Giant Growth but folds a death trigger into the bargain: in graveyard and aristocrats shells, that sacrifice-on-entry clause turns the downside into a resource. Cast at full price, the +3/+3 still fires but the 3/3 sticks around, and flash means you don't have to commit it on your own turn. The instant-speed timing is where the card earns its keep: resolve the trigger in response to a removal spell and you've blanked it by inflating the target past the damage, or sandbag the spell until blocks are declared to flip a one-sided trade into a two-for-one. Hold it up over an opponent's turn and you threaten an ambush blocker, then keep the body if the attack never comes. The evoke clause is the lever that makes both modes coexist: the trick is priced above a one-mana growth so the flexibility isn't free, and the version that leaves a creature behind costs the full four. You pay either in tempo or in a body, never in nothing.