Donate

Handing your opponent a permanent reads like a do-nothing political gesture, but the strategic axis it opens is durability of effect: most "I don't want this anymore" outs sacrifice or destroy the permanent, while this leaves it on the battlefield and merely transfers control. Cumulative upkeeps, life-loss triggers, and any "at the beginning of your upkeep" downside all travel with the title. That inversion is what made the card famous. Pair it with Illusions of Grandeur, an enchantment that grants twenty life and then bleeds its controller out, and the gift becomes a kill spell: bank the life, hand off the upkeep tax, and let the donated enchantment do the executing. The two-card loop that combo spawned (Trix) is why this sorcery is remembered at all, and it remains one of the cleaner demonstrations of how a symmetrical-looking effect gets weaponized by changing whose problem the permanent is.

The targeting does the rest of the work: it can pass a liability to an opponent or shift control to anyone at the table, which is why the card has always read as a combo enabler first and a curiosity second. The cost is incidental; sorcery speed and a modest price never mattered next to the fact that control of the permanent stays changed and the recurring downside becomes somebody else's upkeep to survive.