Interjection

The combat trick reduced to its structural core: a temporary two-point pump and the one keyword that changes what that pump means. First strike is the operative word, because +2/+2 alone just trades bigger, while first strike lets the boosted creature deal its damage before the opponent's creature can hit back, turning a mutual-destruction block into a clean kill that leaves your creature standing. At one white mana, the price buys exactly enough to punish someone who set up their combat math without accounting for the surprise, which is the oldest bluff in white's toolkit: a single untapped plains and the threat that the block they were counting on is about to go one-sided. The effect works on both sides of combat, whether you throw your creature in front of an attacker to eat it for free or ambush a blocker while swinging in, but the shape of the trade is the same either way. You spend the card, they lose the creature, and your board comes out ahead by a body that survived the exchange. The design keeps it single-target and until-end-of-turn on purpose, so it stays a scalpel rather than a sweep: a card that rewards the player who reads the exact combat step about to matter and holds a lone white mana open to win it.