Skillful Lunge

Two mana for +2/+0 and first strike is the math of a blowout in combat: stack it on a blocker and you turn a one-sided trade into an ambush, since the attacker dies before it deals damage and your creature walks away untouched. The first strike is doing more work than the power boost. A naked +2/+0 trick just makes your creature bigger; pairing it with first strike rewrites the damage step entirely, letting a small creature kill something larger and survive, or letting an attacker win a block it would otherwise lose. It is a pump spell that doubles as removal in the right combat, and the instant-speed timing is the whole point: held up, it punishes an opponent for attacking or blocking into open white mana. White has printed many combat tricks built on this same tempo-for-a-body trade, but the first-strike clause is what separates this one from the flat pumps, and it is the reason the card reads as a threat rather than a buff. Plain in execution, ruthless in the right window.