Mangara's Blessing

A lifegain instant with a discard clause is an odd hybrid, and the second ability tells you exactly which threat Mirage was answering: targeted discard. The base mode is plain insurance, five life at instant speed. But the card was built with a contingency for a specific kind of disruption, the kind where an opponent's spell or ability makes you pitch a card from hand. When that happens, this one shrugs it off: you bank two extra life and the card floats back to your hand at the next clean opportunity, so the discard nets the opponent nothing. That is the whole point of the second clause. It functions as a counter-incentive aimed at hand attack, a card that punishes the act of being targeted by it rather than the threat itself. The friction is that the recursion only triggers on opponent-forced discard; ditching it yourself to a rummage or a cycling effect leaves it in the graveyard, so it never becomes a soft engine you can loop at will. The design reflects an era when lifegain was treated as a serviceable defensive plank and discard was a feared enough archetype to warrant a dedicated hedge. Neither premise has aged especially well, but the structure is clean: a defensive instant that costs nothing to keep if your opponent insists on trying to take it from you.