Explosive Growth

A green pump trick where the bonus jumps from +2/+2 to +5/+5 if you've spent five extra mana getting there. That gap is the card's entire personality, and not in its favor. The base mode is a single green pip for a fine combat boost, the kind of trick that swings one fight and asks nothing of the deck around it. The escalated mode costs six total mana for a temporary boost on a single creature, a return that almost no game state rewards. Most kicker designs of this era scaled the payoff roughly in step with the surcharge, which is exactly the discipline that keeps the mechanic honest: the steeper the bonus, the more the price should hurt to justify it. Here the math comes apart. Five extra mana for three extra power and toughness, both of which vanish at end of turn, is a ceiling almost no one has reason to reach for. So the card effectively lives on its floor, and the second number printed in its text becomes a curiosity rather than a plan. That makes it a clean specimen of where kicker's promise (one card, two speeds, early play or late payoff) thinned out: the ceiling only earns its place when the cost-to-reward ratio invites you upward, and this one never quite does.