Bargaining Table

The pricing scales with what your opponent is holding, which inverts the usual incentive of a card-draw artifact. Most charge a flat fee and reward you for being ahead on tempo; this one runs cheapest against an empty grip and grinds toward unplayable against a full one. When an opponent dumps their hand to develop the board, every activation costs nothing extra and you refuel for the price of tapping a permanent. When they hold up answers and keep their cards, the table taxes you for each look at a fresh draw. The effect bites hardest against the hoarders: a controller sitting on countermagic makes every activation an expensive proposition, while the same permanent becomes a free draw engine the moment an aggressive opponent empties out. The arithmetic routes entirely through their decisions rather than yours, which makes it strange to pilot: you are reading the opponent's hand to time activations, not your own board. Note the asymmetry hidden in plain sight, because only you can tap it. The cost checks the opponent's hand size, but the cards always come to you regardless of where you sit on resources. This is a draw artifact whose efficiency is set by whoever you are playing against, a rare case of an effect that pays out best precisely when your opponent has nothing left to hold.