Struggle for Skemfar

The counter resolves before the fight, and that sequencing is the entire pitch. Most green fight spells swing your existing creature into a bigger body and pray it survives: same-size fights kill both combatants, and an opponent holding a pump spell can cast it in response to turn what looked like clean removal into a double blowout. Here the +1/+1 counter goes down first and permanently, so the fighter enters the exchange already a size larger and stays that way whether or not there's anything to fight (the fight clause reads "up to one," so an empty board simply makes this a growth spell). Foretell softens the tempo hit: bank it early for two colorless, cash it out later for a single green, splitting a four-mana sorcery across two turns while concealing the play from anyone tracking your hand. It stays a sorcery at both ends, so this is a main-phase deployment rather than an instant-speed ambush; the exiled card is a threat you fire on curve, not a trap you leave up. The cost is the whole four mana even in the worst case: draw no target or fail to land the kill, and you've paid full price to pump a single creature. But that pumped creature keeps its counter regardless, which is exactly what most fight spells cannot promise. They shrink your board once the dust settles; this one leaves it larger even when it kills nothing.