Giant Strength

The double-red cost is the design fingerprint. The white aura at one mana, Holy Strength, and the black version at the same price, Unholy Strength, both deliver +1/+2 for a single colored pip. Red was handed a +2/+2 effect but priced at two red mana, a cost structure that reads today as a steep tax for what is effectively a vanilla pump aura. The logic was color-pie enforcement: raw creature-buffing was not red's job, and the doubled pip made the card unsplashable, locking it into mono-red decks that already wanted to be turning creatures sideways. The card-disadvantage problem that haunts all auras (one kill spell collects the aura and its host in a single exchange) is sharpened here by the cost, since trading two red mana plus the enchantment for a one-mana removal spell is about as lopsided a swap as red ever offered itself. Later red pump auras reworked the math: Madcap Skills bolts on evasion to justify the investment, Dragon Mantle replaces itself by cantripping and adds reach. Giant Strength is the unreconstructed original, a snapshot of how cautiously early Magic priced cross-color effects before the design team learned to attach the riders that pay back the tempo loss.