Copper Tablet

A symmetrical pinger from the game's first artifact slot, and a clean specimen of an early design philosophy: artifacts that did something to everyone, with the deckbuilder responsible for tilting the symmetry. Two mana buys a permanent that ticks both players for one at the start of each upkeep, a rate that only makes sense if the controller is racing, packing more lifegain, or aiming to close a stalled board where neither side can break through. The triggers fire on every upkeep, including the controller's own, which is the discipline that prices the effect: you cannot park it on your side and grind the opponent out for free. That self-inflicted clock is the load-bearing decision here, and it is the same constraint that defined Manabarbs and most of the other "everyone takes damage" effects of the period. This predates the modern instinct to make damage sources asymmetric by default (controller-only triggers, "opponent" clauses, protection riders); it reads today as the work of a design team that trusted the deckbuilding metagame to sort out who actually wanted the effect. A historical curio more than a working card, but a useful one for understanding what the early artifact slot was for.