Briber's Purse

The whole pitch is the X paid up front: you sink a lump of mana into the purse on the turn it lands, then draw against that balance one counter at a time whenever combat calls for it. Each activation costs only a single mana and a tap, and the effect (a creature can't attack or block this turn) is a soft Fog aimed at one body rather than a removal spell. That distinction is the design point. Nothing here kills, taxes, or permanently neutralizes; the purse buys time, one combat step at a time, and the gem counters are a hard cap on how many times you get to do it. It functions as a Pacifism you ration across many turns and many targets instead of one permanent one. The tension the design resolves is mana-curve smoothing: a flood of unspent early mana converts into stored interaction that costs almost nothing to deploy later, so a slow draw or an open turn becomes a bank of combat tricks held in reserve. The activated ability is mana-cheap but tap-locked, meaning the purse can only stop one attacker or blocker per turn no matter how full it is, which keeps it from unwinding an entire alpha strike. A colorless artifact with no color requirement and no floor cost slots into any deck that wants a cheap, repeatable tempo lever and the early mana to load it.