Doubling Season

The most-copied multiplier in the game, and the one that exposes how many of Magic's resource systems are quietly the same system. Tokens and counters look unrelated at the table: a saproling is a body, a loyalty count is a planeswalker's life total, a +1/+1 counter is a stat boost. This sees through all of it to the underlying act of placement, and doubles whatever the source was going to make. The precise wording matters: it only multiplies counters an effect would place, so adding loyalty to pay for an ability (a cost, not an effect) goes untouched. What it does double is a planeswalker's starting loyalty as it enters, which is why a freshly-arrived walker can immediately reach an ultimate it would normally need several turns to build toward. The design solved a single problem: a single payoff for both going wide and going tall without a separate engine for each. The result is one enchantment that taxes nothing and amplifies both axes. It carries no synergy of its own and total synergy with everything else, idle until a token-maker resolves or a counter would land, then explosive the instant either happens. Its descendants are explicit about the split it collapsed: Parallel Lives took the token half, Hardened Scales and Branching Evolution took the counter half, Primal Vigor handed the doubling to the whole table. None of them carry both halves at once, which is precisely why this remains the version that warps a board the fastest.