Case of the Trampled Garden

Counter-matters payoffs usually arrive as a one-shot spell or a fragile creature that dies before it earns anything back; parking the engine on an enchantment gives it a durability those never had. It also arrives most of the way to its own condition. Total power eight is a threshold a green board clears without much effort, and the two counters it distributes on entry are a down payment on that number, not a reward for reaching it. Those counters can trip the solve a turn early, so a Case entering an already-developed board is often solved before your next combat step, whether that board got there by going wide or by going tall: total power counts every creature you control, so both routes push the same lever. Once solved, the payoff is a repeatable single-target pump. Every attack thickens one creature and hands it trample until end of turn, converting a stalled board into a threat that ignores chump blockers and grows more resilient each combat. Because the buff picks a target, it stacks its investment into one carrier rather than smearing it across the team, which is exactly what a trample-plus-counter engine wants. The solve condition ties the payoff to precisely the board state where it hurts most: a big, growing team already committed to the red zone.