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The elementals have existed in magic the gathering for a long time in numbers great enough to be considered a tribe and a reasonably powerful one, but because they are so varied and independently powerful people have generally not considered them as their own tribe until the Lorwyn expansion set sought to right that wrong. To do that it put a considerable number of elementals into a single set and gave them unifying cards to help them work together, but the elementals tend to still be large, powerful and expensive.

Incandescent Soulstroke is a rare Elemental Shaman from the Lorwyn expansion set of magic the gathering. It is a 2/2 creature that costs one red and two colorless and gives all other elemental creatures that you control +1/+1. This alone is something that Elementals have never really had and it is useful, but it is the lesser of the Incandescent Soulstrokes powers.

The second ability costs one red mana, one colorless mana and tapping the Incandescent Soultroke. It reads "You may put an Elemental creature card from your hand onto the battlefield. That creature gains haste until end of turn. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the next end step."
With so many of the elementals being large and powerful creatures and all of them getting +1/+1 this is a very useful card, allowing you to put out very large elementals and smashing into your opponent with them before they have creatures that are large enough to stop them, and while the opponent may be able to chump block them chump blocking a creature that is going to die at the end of the turn is not a generally effective ability.

Using the abilities of the elementals is also a reasonable plan and one that in some ways may be more effective. There are a considerable number of elementals with come into or leave play effects. Of these a number of them will do damage to creatures or players. This can work out very well because you can pay two mana, put them into play, attack forcing the opponent to take damage or block and then when they die do more damage either to them or one of their creatures.

There are already a surprising number of elementals which are generally disposable. Cards like ball lightning while have no negative side effects of being cast with this card and even those that do can largely be overcome by the fact that you can put them into play at instant speed making the surprise blockers as well.

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