Will of the Mardu

The two modes take a census: one counts a target player's board and hands you a matching swarm of Warriors, the other counts your board and points it at a single creature as damage. Cast without a commander, that symmetry forces a real choice, because each half wants the opposite game state (the token mode rewards a well-populated target board, the burn mode rewards a wide one of your own). The both-modes clause is what breaks the tension, and it does so in a way the sequencing rewards: spell instructions resolve in printed order, so the Warriors from the first mode are already on the battlefield when the second mode measures how many creatures you control. Take both with a commander in play and the tokens you just made feed directly into the damage count, letting a small board balloon and then swing that inflated number at a target in one cast. The Warriors are red rather than white, tying the card to the Mardu identity it is named for instead of a mono-white go-wide shell. This is built as a payoff for games with a commander in play: an instant that is merely serviceable when you can only pick one line, and genuinely swingy the moment the both-modes bonus is guaranteed. It belongs to a lineage of spells that scale off creature counts, but folding two such effects into one modal instant, then gating the greedy compounding line behind commandership, is the move that gives it its shape.