Rhystic Shield

Strip away the optional clause and what's left is a marginal combat trick: a guaranteed +0/+1 across your board that rarely changes a math problem. The escalation is where the design lives. The additional +0/+2 is not yours to grant; it is your opponent's to decline, and declining costs them two mana they may not have to spare. That structure folds a bluff and a resource probe into a single white instant. Cast it when their mana is open and the payment is trivial, and you have done nothing. Cast it when their mana is already spoken for (committed to a block, a removal spell, an end-step play of their own) and the full +0/+3 resolves through a tax they cannot afford. You set the price and the moment; they choose whether the swing or the sweep they were planning is worth more than the two mana to stop you. The rhystic family wagers that an optional cost extracts value no matter which way the opponent jumps, and this is the defensive expression of that bet: built to absorb an alpha strike or hold a board through damage-based removal. It never matched the ceiling of the card-drawing engine that shares the rhystic name, but it runs on the same logic, where even refusal has a price tag attached.