Cutthroat Maneuver

Four mana for a two-target combat trick is a steep tax for an effect that lives and dies in the combat step, and that price is exactly why this never escaped the bulk bin. The lifelink is the genuinely useful half: granting it to two attackers turns a tempo swing into a real life-total swing, and stacking it on a creature with already-large power makes for a meaningful race-reversal at instant speed. The +1/+1 is the part that doesn't earn its keep, the kind of small static bump that combat tricks at half the cost deliver alongside more relevant text. The design is a double-buff trick built around the idea that two-for-one combat math justifies a higher rate, but the math rarely gets there: you need two creatures already in profitable attacks, both worth defending or pushing, on the same turn you're holding up four mana you didn't spend developing the board. It's a fine effect attached to a body of a spell that asks too much to set up. Where lifelink combat tricks justify themselves is on creatures that already swing for a lot or on boards wide enough that doubling the targets matters, and even then cheaper instants tend to do the same defensive work without the surcharge.