Dungeoneer's Pack

Among the objects built to grant the initiative, this is the one with the least stage presence: no body, no combat relevance, just a scheduled event you pay into ahead of time. The cost structure lives entirely in two clauses of friction. Entering tapped, then demanding a sorcery-speed activation on a later turn, is a deliberate delay that keeps the claim on the Undercity from arriving cheaply, so the artifact rarely takes the initiative the turn it lands. What that patience buys is unusually broad: three life, a card, a Treasure, and the initiative itself, all in one activation. The Treasure is the tell about how the exchange was tuned to feel. It shaves the sting off the total outlay ( to cast plus to activate) by handing back one mana, softening the trade without pretending to make it free. That framing explains why the life, the card, and the token are bundled at all: the initiative is doing the heavy lifting, and these are the sweeteners that keep the sacrifice worthwhile even when the dungeon crawl stalls and never returns a card off the venture. Against the cheaper initiative-grantors, it asks the most up front and pays back the widest, an exchange suited to a turn with nothing more urgent to spend on.