Enduring Victory

The destroy clause refuses to fire outside of combat, and that restriction is the whole design. Where white's open-ended removal has to overpay for the privilege of hitting anything, this spell trades flexibility for a lower conceptual cost: it can only touch a creature that has committed to an attack or a block, which pins the correct casting moment to mid-combat, after the arrows are drawn. Bolster 1 is the rider, and it does quieter structural work than it looks. Killing one attacker while a +1/+1 counter lands elsewhere reshapes the arithmetic of the very combat you just intervened in, tilting a one-for-one into a board swing. The bolster clause is not free to aim, either: the counter seeks your creature with the least toughness rather than your best threat, so if you have a wide board you cannot simply feed growth to your chosen finisher. The spell wants a battlefield populated by a modest creature worth improving, not a single brick, and it rewards a wide board over an empty one. This is a recurring white instinct rendered cleanly: pay a premium for removal that also leaves you slightly ahead, the same impulse behind kill spells that gain life or leave a token in their wake. The rate never impresses on its own. The timing window is sharper than the number suggests.