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Moxonomy

Stolen Vitality

Instant1 generic manaRed mana

The clever wrinkle is the conditional keyword: the same spell hands out trample when it's your turn and first strike when it isn't, which quietly encodes the two jobs a pump spell actually does. On offense you want the extra points to punch through a chump blocker, so trample turns +3/+1 into a threat that ignores small defense. On defense you want your creature to survive the exchange and kill the attacker, so first strike lets a bolstered blocker land its damage before taking any back. Most combat tricks pick one lane and leave the player to hope the situation matches; this one reads the turn structure and adapts to it, so the card is never dead in your hand regardless of who's swinging. The design lesson is efficiency through context-sensitivity: rather than printing a bigger buff or a wider mode, the keyword just follows the phase, which is why the numbers stay modest. That +3/+1 split (more power than toughness) leans the raw stats toward attacking, and the trample-on-your-turn clause reinforces it, so the card knows what it wants to do while still covering the defensive case competently. It's a tidy piece of red combat math dressed up as a simple pump: the value isn't the size, it's that the relevant keyword shows up exactly when it matters.

Stolen Vitality (dbl)
DBL · #161common
Pricing
Normal: $0.22
Foil: $0.37
Oracle Text

Rules text

Target creature gets +3/+1 until end of turn. If it's your turn, that creature gains trample until end of turn. Otherwise, it gains first strike until end of turn. (A creature with trample can deal excess combat damage to the player or planeswalker it's attacking. A creature with first strike deals combat damage before creatures without first strike.)
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
Legal
Modern
Legal
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
Legal
Brawl
Legal
Historic
Legal
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
Legal
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
N/A
Pauper Commander
Legal
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
Legal
Penny Dreadful
N/A
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
Legal
TLR
Legal
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

2 sets
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