Accelerated Mutation

Pricing a combat trick off the most expensive thing you've already deployed is a backward way to scale: the payout grows precisely when you least need it. To get +7/+7 you need a permanent worth seven mana already resolved, and a board that has paid for something that big rarely wants a five-mana instant to close the gap. The card reaches for a feedback loop it can't quite close. Decks built to slam costly permanents reward you for being ahead on the curve; bolting a reactive trick onto that plan means the math arrives a turn after the moment it could have decided. Compare the green tradition of fight effects and overruns: those also need creatures on the table, but they convert the board you already built into damage proactively, at a rate that tracks what's in front of you. This trick taxes you twice instead, once to land the big permanent and again to hold up five mana for the pump, and the bonus only matters in spots where you were likely winning anyway. There is a real idea buried here, the same expensive-permanents-matter hook later designs would mine with cheaper, more proactive payoffs, but at this cost the reward lands too late to swing a game that's still in doubt.