Yare

The whole effect is locked behind one word: defending. This only fires for the player under attack, which makes it useless on offense and inert in hand until the opponent commits to a swing. What you get in exchange is a math trick. The +3/+0 is the obvious read, but the multiblock clause is the payload: a single creature can soak up to three attackers in one combat step, trading up against a swarm. Instead of pumping one blocker to win one fight, you turn it into a wall that eats an entire flank, which is exactly the answer go-wide aggression hates to run into. The friction is structural and shared with every reactive combat spell of its vintage: the window of usefulness opens only once the attack is declared, narrow and entirely dependent on the opponent's choices. The multiblock effect later found cleaner, more flexible homes, but this is an early stab at the "one blocker, many attackers" problem at instant speed, written before the design vocabulary for that math had settled.