Strength of Solidarity

The party mechanic gates this spell's payoff behind the width of your board: each of the four class types you can field adds one permanent +1/+1 counter to the target, so the printed ceiling of four presumes a full slate of roles online at once, which few boards deliver on curve. The realistic return sits closer to two or three, and that gap between the advertised maximum and the likely payoff is the design's central tension: the card sells a four-counter swing while pricing itself for players who will usually collect less. Even a modest count keeps the rate reasonable, no worse than a temporary combat pump that asks nothing of your board, and here the growth sticks rather than fading at end of turn. Timing and permanence are what separate it from those tricks. The sorcery clause forbids holding it up at instant speed, so it plays as a proactive investment rather than an ambush, and the counters it deposits keep the threat larger long after the spell has resolved. The catch is the one shadowing every counter effect: remove the target and the counters go with it, so committing into open mana courts a two-for-one. What the card rewards is a curve deliberately spread across the four class types, which is exactly the deckbuilding behavior the party structure was built to encourage. Few cards state that ask so plainly.