2008's Morningtide followed up the pastoral Lorwyn with a renewed focus on boosting allied creatures - not just through the overlapping "type/class" creature types, but through one of the set's mechanics: Reinforce.

Reinforce X is an activated ability that allows you to pay the Reinforce cost of a given card, discard the card, and put X +1/+1 counters on target creature. The ceiling for Reinforce is high: it's an instant-speed combat trick that puts persistent counters on a creature. It gives extra value to recursion spells and can stock the graveyard with creatures at instant speed for Threshold or Delirium. It targets any creature, so you can target your teammate's creature in Two-Headed Giant or make political alliances in Commander, which is niche, but useful. That's all purely theoretical, though, as the cards printed with Reinforce are uninspiring and saw very little play.

Reinforce only appears on 11 cards across three decades of Magic: seven in Morningtide and four in Modern Horizons sets. The design impulse is clear: creatures get quickly outclassed on the battlefield, so why not let them boost each other? Mosquito Guard is only useful in the opening turns of the game, but a Mosquito Guard attacking in with a grip of Reinforce cards remains relevant. Sometimes, Giant Growth is overkill when you're trying to win a combat or take your creature out of burn range - Earthbrawn lets you deploy either a temporary buff or a permanent, albeit smaller, one. As a concept, Reinforce is built around flexibility and ongoing relevance, and so it's conceptually strong.

In practice, though, much like with Channel, Morningtide's Reinforce was an overcosted combat trick stapled onto an overcosted creature. Neither side was truly desirable and, while it's nice to have flexibility built into your cards, playing with Reinforce meant playing with a 2/2 flier for or the world's worst Triplicate Spirits, which just doesn't cut it unless you're shuffling up 40 cards.

In Limited, Reinforce was fine - Swell of Courage was an absolute golden bomb in Limited, and Burrenton Bombardier was one of the top picks for White. Brighthearth Banneret was an incredibly mediocre creature and an uninspiring combat trick, so you would run it out on turn two or, if drawn later, cash it in for a +1/+1 counter every time. Hunting Triad was much better, as the block rewarded typal synergy. Elves were especially potent in multiples - Imperious Perfect into Hunting Triad created a massive board presence, and you had the Reinforce 3 ability as a bonus in case they tried to snipe your Perfect with a Nameless Inversion.

In 60-card decks, Reinforce was mediocre. The exception was Rustic Clachan, which saw a ton of play as a utility land in the mono-White Kithkin Aggro decks, where it would power up an early Goldmeadow Stalwart or neutralize an opponent's Tarfire on your Wizened Cenn. Outside of Clachan, Reinforce went into the big bin of mechanics forgotten outside of Limited.

That's not Reinforce's fault - the game was different twenty years ago, back when Battlegrowth was the standard to add a +1/+1 counter to a creature at instant speed, and so the Reinforce ability was often way too conservatively priced. In addition, Lorwyn Standard was a format absolutely dominated by the extremely potent Faeries deck, though, which was more interested in Time Walking you with Mistbind Clique or Cryptic Command than it was with combat. It didn't matter how reinforced your creatures were when they were getting bounced, stolen with Sower of Temptation, or simply flown over by a squadron of Faerie Rogues that had sprouted from a Bitterblossom.

Modern Horizons 2 got Reinforce right with Break Ties, Bannerhide Krushok, and Wren's Run Hydra. Break Ties is a situationally useful spell that you're happy to run as either a flexible answer or a combat trick. Compare it to Mosquito Guard, which is only ever a 1/1 with First Strike and which costs twice as much to Reinforce. As originally designed, Reinforce was very binary: you either got the creature, or you got the counters. It was very easy to decide which you wanted in a given game scenario, and so there was actually very little choice to it. There was more flexibility built into the Modern Horizons 2 trio (plus MH3's Fowl Strike), and so the decision tree was more nuanced, with the cards efficient at any point in the game.

Quite simply, Reinforce is a great idea, poorly executed. Like Cycling, modal spells, split cards, or modal double-faced cards, you sacrifice a bit of efficiency for more flexibility, and that's a great design spot for Magic. The return of Reinforce in Modern Horizons 2 and 3 was encouraging - Fowl Strike is only remarkable for the outre art, but Bannerhide Krushok is much closer to what Reinforce should be.

There's a scrappy utility to the Krushok, as it's an efficient beater in a perfect world, a combat trick or removal neutralizer if you're desperate, and, should you make it to, it can power up something on the board. You're generally happy running a Disenchant-with-upside as your twenty-third card, and Break Ties has a fourth mode as a generally uncounterable Battlegrowth.

Wren's Run Hydra is flexible as a creature and flexible as a pump spell - it's never very efficient, but you're happy to have a card that gets big in the late game or permanently pumps a creature, even at .

As we move further into Marvel territory, and as Wizards experiments more with "cameo mechanics" and non-Standard products, I expect Reinforce to continue to pop up - it would have been flavorfully apropos for Duskmourn, symbolizing resourceful scavengers turning even the dead into resources, or noble survivors sacrificing themselves to help others to safety, and I wouldn't be surprised if it showed up in the Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander decks. It's fertile territory for future exploration, plays into recurring archetypes like +1/+1 counters, discard, and graveyard tricks, and makes Limited more interesting and unpredictable - that's a mechanic worth revisiting in my estimation.