Divine Transformation
The pump-Aura curve once had a shape, and this sat at the top of it: Holy Strength gave +1/+2 for one mana, Unholy Strength gave +2/+1, and the finishing buff was meant to land here at double-white and four total. The Aura tax (card disadvantage, plus the exposure of attaching your enchantment to a creature that can die in response and take both with it) was treated as a real cost the curve was built around, paid back over several turns of beatdown rather than evaporating to the first removal spell drawn. The math did not survive contact with play. Giant Growth did most of the same work for a single mana at instant speed without leaving a target on the battlefield, and creature bodies inflated past the point where +3/+3 swung combat decisively. What this slot documents is a moment when Wizards still believed pump Auras were a load-bearing archetype rather than a curiosity. The design vocabulary moved on fast: equipment carried the buff without committing two cards to one fragile creature, +1/+1 counters made the boost permanent and removal-proof, and one-shot pump spells absorbed the combat-trick role. The card was reaching for all three jobs at once, and each got solved separately, by tools that left the Aura with nothing to do.
