Divine Favor

The numbers tell the whole story of where this Aura sits: three life on arrival, a +1/+3 swing that pads toughness more than reach, all for two mana. This is defense-first Aura design from a school that has largely been retired. The life gain is the tell. It was built for the white life-payoff decks of early-era Magic, the ones that counted lifegain triggers as a deckbuilding axis and rewarded soulsisters effects with cheap, repeatable life events. Stack it on a creature that cares about gaining life and you get a body buff plus a trigger feeder in a single card. The toughness bias is what dates it. Modern Aura design leans toward effects that win the game when they resolve (haste, evasion, a kill-the-blocker clause) because card disadvantage demands it: spend two cards' worth of resources, get a creature that ends the game faster. Divine Favor spends two cards to make a creature survive longer, which is the older, slower bargain. And because it carries no flash, the bargain is committed in advance on your own turn, never sprung in combat: it asks the enchanted creature to keep blocking and keep paying off across future turns, not to break through this one. That is a coherent design for a defensive, lifegain-leaning shell, and an honest reminder of how differently white Auras were costed before players learned to punish two-for-ones.