Energy Chamber

Charge counters are the hidden second economy of artifact design: a resource that does nothing on its own but unlocks abilities on the artifacts built to spend them, from Pentad Prism to Coretapper and the various charge-fueled engines that followed. This is the recurring generator for that economy, ticking a charge counter onto any noncreature artifact each upkeep at no further cost. The modal split is what keeps it from being a single-purpose piece: the same upkeep trigger that feeds a charge-hungry artifact can instead grow an artifact creature one +1/+1 counter at a time, so the card straddles the line between a combo accelerant and a slow, grindy beatdown enabler. The tension in the design is its speed. A counter per turn is a glacial rate of return, which is exactly why it sits comfortably in the half of artifact design that rewards stacking generators rather than racing the clock: two or three of these turn a charge-counter payoff from a once-a-game effect into a per-turn one. The card produces nothing the moment it resolves, asking instead that the engine it feeds already be on the table. That patience is the cost it pays for being repeatable and for sitting outside the reach of most creature removal, and it is why the card reads as infrastructure rather than a threat.