Blessing

A mana-sink Aura that doubles as a window into how Alpha was thinking about white. The double-white pip on a two-mana enchantment is heavier than the modest payoff it offers, and the activation is the whole point: rather than printing a static +1/+1 for two mana (which cheaper, simpler Aura designs of the period already covered), the design hands the pump rate to the controller as a repeatable mana investment. Every untapped white source past the second turn becomes a combat trick, which is the structural trade being explored here: pay the enchant tax up front, then convert mana directly into combat math each turn that follows. The activation cost is the brake. One activation per white mana means the ceiling scales with your land count and the floor is one extra point of toughness or damage, and the Aura's vulnerability to creature removal turns every pump into a tempo gamble (the opponent can kill the creature in response and you lose the enchantment too). The design vocabulary here, an Aura whose printed text is almost entirely an activated ability, is rare even by the standards of its era: most Auras of the period granted static bonuses, while Blessing asks the controller to keep feeding it. It is an early sketch of a permanent that does almost nothing on its own, a sink that only pays out as long as you have mana to pour into it.