Artifact Possession

A punishment-aura from the era when artifacts were the format's defining problem and black's answer was to make using them hurt. Antiquities printed a small suite of these artifact-hosers, and this one targets the exact pressure point of the period: tapping. Every Mishra's Workshop chain, every Winter Orb lock, every Icy Manipulator activation, every artifact mana rock turning on, becomes a two-damage trigger on the controller. The design is unusually careful for 1994. The aura fires whenever the enchanted artifact becomes tapped, so it punishes mana rocks, equipment, and lock pieces alike, and it fires again on activated abilities that do not include in their cost, catching the artifacts that tax or grind without tapping. The "without " clause is there to keep a single tap-to-activate from triggering the aura twice (once for the tap, once for the activation), not to spare any particular use. It also fires on becoming tapped from any source, so a Relic Barrier or an opposing Icy pointed at the enchanted permanent still pings its controller. What dates the card is the frame: a three-mana aura that demands the opponent keep playing into it, on a permanent type that has spent three decades getting cheaper, more disposable, and easier to sacrifice in response. Taxing activation rather than removing the permanent is an idea Wizards has returned to in cleaner shells, but the original is a snapshot of a format where artifacts were the metagame.