Slaughter Cry

Three mana for a combat trick is a steep ask, and the +3/+0 alone never justifies it; the first strike is what changes the math at the table. Bolt-sized power on its own only wins races where the attacker survives the swing-back, but first strike rewrites the combat step so the buffed creature deals its damage first, often clearing the blocker before it can answer. That turns the spell from a damage pump into a one-sided removal effect during combat: point it at a creature blocking a larger body, or one being blocked by a larger body, and the first-strike window does the killing while the power boost just guarantees the kill connects. The cost is the honest tax on that double duty. Cheaper tricks of this shape tend to give less power or skip the evergreen keyword entirely, and the slower ones at common rarity are the price of asking a single instant to both push damage and survive the trade. It is a workmanlike piece of red's combat-trick lineage, sitting between the pure pump spells that only race and the dedicated removal that only kills, doing a narrow slice of both in the same instant-speed window.