by Elton Gahr

Created on: November 04, 2009

One of the simplest and most powerful of the abilities of red creatures is to temperarily pump up their own toughness. The traditional cost for this, set by the Shivan dragon is one red mana for each point of power. This means that for only a few mana you can make it far more difficult for creatures to block without being killed and if they don't block the opponent is taking more damage. But what is better than being able to increase the attack of a single creature? Being able to increase the power of them all.

Inner-Flame Igniter is an uncommon elemental warrior from the lorwyn expansion set of magic the gathering. It costs one red and two colorless to put into play and has two power and two toughness as well as an ability that costs one red and two colorless and reads "Creatures you control get +1/+0 until end of turn. If this is the third time this ability has resolved this turn, creatures you control gain first strike until end of turn."

That this costs three mana to use once seems expensive until you consider that if you have only two creatures in play it is actually less than the cost for the same thing if each of them had the traditional ability, since then it would require all red mana. With each additional creature the cost becomes considerably more valuable.

That leads to the question of the type of deck to play this in. Being an elemental this seems like the natural choice, but I do not think it is the best choice. Elementals tend to be large and so playing multiples of them is going to be more difficult. Instead I believe that the goblin tribe is the one that this goes best with. With so many cards that allow you to put multiple tokens into play having three, five or even more creatures in play when you use this ability is not unreasonable. This can be a significant amount of extra damage for only three mana.

The second part of the ability is of course useful as well. This part says if you activate it three times each creature gets first strike, since thy will have also got +3/+0 this is quite a powerful bonus, but it will not happen often. The reason for this is simply that it costs nine mana to use this, and unless you put this into the game late you should have killed the opponent long before you have nine mana.

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