Blood Lust

Man, that artist really took the term "blood lust" at face value, didn't he? Well, hot girl embracing ... Wall of Organs, I guess, is definitely more original than a muscled dude killing an orc.

Oh ha ha, Wall of Organs. Gross.

This card's trying really hard not to be Giant Growth, and that's fair enough -- red doesn't care about toughness, typically. Still, it would have been just fine as +3/+0 for R.

See? Works just fine. I'm glad you noticed the new art, I stole it from some guy that stole it from FLCL. But the card's boring, right? It doesn't capture red's berserker aesthetic, and it's just straight-up worse than Brute Force. Granted, that's a time-shifted card, but that's the point of Time Spiral block: to look at how cards could have been. Red Giant Growth isn't that big a stretch, all things considered. So let's give it another go.

Now that's red. It taps into a newer red mechanic -- of giving an opponent a choice of damnations -- but, unlike the black version of dilemma cards, it has distinct situations in which it's not useful. (When your opponent has only bulky blockers, f'rinstance.) There's an argument for shaving off a colorless mana and making the card a sorcery, but I think it plays better as an instant; red is unpredictable and can be difficult to plan against. (That's part of the beauty of burn spells -- it's a wonderful flavor-mechanic overlap.)

This card seems really good at first glance -- it looks like it might even be too good. Compare it to Incinerate, though; for the same casting cost, you get a situational, sorta-sorcery speed burn spell that also deals 3 damage to the target's controller. It strikes me as better than Incinerate in many cases, but not quite as good as Lightning Bolt. The card's no better than burn on defense, which suits me and my idea of red just fine. That being said, it's possible the card should only be +2/+0 at instant speed; at sorcery, I think +3/+0 is the clear and only choice.

It's also worth noting that the card got slightly better due to rarity -- it's now common, as opposed to the original's uncommon. (Yes, it was printed at uncommon. You could get a Blood Lust or a Mana Drain. Nice odds!)