Buccaneer's Bravado

The first mode is a generic combat trick: a couple mana for +1/+1 and first strike, the sort of thing that wins a single block or pushes a marginal point of damage. The second mode is why the card exists. Name a Pirate as the target and the same spell hands out double strike instead, doubling whatever the creature's adjusted power becomes after the bump. On an evasive or pumped attacker, that is a swing in the high single digits out of nowhere, the kind of math an opponent rarely accounts for when they choose to block or hold up nothing. The modal split is the elegant part: the card is never a dead draw, because the floor (first strike on any creature) is always live, while the ceiling is gated behind a creature-type requirement that costs nothing extra when you meet it. That structure (one mode universal, one mode tribally rewarded) is a recurring tool for making a payoff card legal in a non-tribal deck without making the tribal build feel taxed. Outside a board built to attack with Pirates, the second line is decoration; inside one, it converts an evasive threat into a clock that closes far faster than its mana cost suggests.