Dystopia

Every player's upkeep brings the same demand: sacrifice a green or white permanent of your choice. The clause reads as symmetrical, but the symmetry is cosmetic. A mono-black deck running neither color has nothing to feed it, so the cost falls entirely on the opponent who plays the two colors it targets. The design lives or dies on that asymmetry, and the strict color restriction is the only reason a three-mana enchantment can hit this hard: brutal against exactly two colors, inert against the other three. The escalating life payment is the counterweight. One life per age counter on the controller's upkeep means the engine grinds the table's green and white permanents away while also grinding its controller, and the toll compounds until the owner decides to stop paying and let it die. That tension (the longer it works, the more it costs to keep working) is the discipline that lets the effect stay this punishing for so little mana. It is one of the cumulative-upkeep enchantments that priced its power in escalating life rather than color, and it speaks to an era comfortable printing color-hosing effects with genuine teeth, aimed squarely at the green and white midrange and weenie strategies of its day. Self-limiting by its own clock, devastating only against the colors named on it: that is the whole bargain.