Consume Strength

When the enemy color pairs got their own gold cards, this was Golgari fusing two effects each parent color already owned: green's pump and black's toughness drain, soldered into a single instant that moves four points across the board. The obvious line is combat math, turning a doomed attacker into one that wins the fight while the blocker shrinks out from under it, but the spell is more flexible than that picture suggests. Both halves are mandatory and each needs a legal target, yet nothing ties the +2/+2 to a creature you control. With two enemy creatures in play, you can buff one of theirs and use the -2/-2 to kill a smaller body, a strange but legal line that lets the card function as removal even when your own board is empty. That untethered targeting is the design's quiet payoff: most removal-by-shrink wants something of yours to point the buff at, while this one will run on an opponent's creatures alone. The -2/-2 doubles as cheap interaction against the early curve, picking off one- and two-toughness creatures at instant speed while the buff goes wherever it does the most work. It is a workmanlike argument from an era out to prove the wedge between enemy colors could be productive rather than merely thematic, and it makes the case in the cleanest currency the game has: combat numbers, pushed two directions in one spell.