Onward // Victory

The two halves are built to multiply each other, and the math is the joke. Onward doubles a creature's power outright (X equals its current power, so a 4-power attacker becomes an 8-power attacker), then the back half waits to be cast off the top of your graveyard for double strike. The split-card aftermath structure means you pay both halves at different times, from different zones, and the payoff is a single creature dealing four times its power at the moment Onward resolves, all in one attack: power doubled, then that doubled figure connecting twice. It is a two-card sequence collapsed onto one piece of cardboard, and the sequencing is fixed by the mechanic. Onward is an instant, but Victory can only be cast from the graveyard, so you cannot lead with the double strike and follow with the pump. To land both in one attack you cast Onward first (pre-combat, since Victory is a sorcery), then cast Victory from the yard, then swing. That ordering is the restriction that stops the package from being a free instant-speed kill: the haymaker has to be assembled before blockers are even on the table. Aftermath does the structural work flashback's exile clause does elsewhere, spending the back half once rather than looping it. When it lands, it ends the game in a single swing; when the creature gets blocked or removed, you have poured two halves' worth of mana into nothing.