Collapsing Borders

Domain enchantments of this era were built to reward the five-color manabases the block was pushing, but this one inverts the usual deal. Most domain cards scale a benefit upward as your lands stretch across more basic types; here, the life gain that scales with domain is a consolation prize stapled to a fixed 3-damage clock that ticks on every player, every upkeep, regardless of who controls what. The asymmetry runs against the manabase, not with it. A deck spanning all five basic types gains 5 against the 3 damage, netting 2 life each upkeep, while a focused two-color opponent takes the full 3 and recoups only one or two, bleeding out faster. The card is less a payoff than a pressure valve: a symmetric burn engine that disproportionately punishes the streamlined decks and lets the domain-stuffed pile shrug it off. It accumulates, too. Leave it on the table and everyone takes 3 a turn, which favors whoever has the most life to spare or the deepest spread of basics to convert the bleeding back into a gain. That makes it the contrarian entry in the domain experiment: a design that turns the central reward mechanic into a tax on everyone except the deck that committed hardest to the theme, and a slow self-burn the controller has to be willing to share.