Favor of Jukai

The channel keyword is what saves this card from dead-draw purgatory, and it does so by attacking the specific weakness of every stat-boosting aura: the moment you cast it, you've committed a card to a creature that can then be killed in response, two-for-oned before the aura ever mattered. Discarding for converts the same +3/+3 and reach into an instant-speed combat trick, so the card that would otherwise sit in hand as a slow buff becomes a blowout on the block or a surprise swing in damage. That optionality is the whole design: the enchantment mode is the greedy build-around (a permanent +3/+3 that also patches the creature's ability to answer fliers, and one flexible enough to sit on an artifact you expect to animate later), while the channel mode is the safety valve you reach for when a permanent aura is a liability. Reach is the quiet second job here, because a ground creature that suddenly gets +3/+3 and can block a flier reframes a race as well as a stall. Channel as a mechanic exists to solve exactly this hand-clog problem across a whole cycle of cards, but this one aims the tension squarely at aura theory: the effect that wants to be cast for value and the same effect that wants to be pitched for tempo, printed on one piece of cardboard.