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Looting on a stick, priced to be paid for. The activated ability draws then discards: the same card selection Merfolk Looter first stapled to a creature and that graveyard decks have leaned on ever since. What separates this one is the surcharge. Merfolk Looter loots for nothing but a tap; this design adds a generic mana on top, and that extra mana is where the design earns its keep. The tap symbol already caps it at one loot per turn, so the mana is not there to meter volume; it is there to make each iteration cost something, since iteration is the entire appeal of a repeatable filtering engine. A 1/2 that pays to loot is not a clock or a blocker of consequence; it is a valve you plan to open turn after turn, feeding a graveyard payoff, digging toward a specific answer, or quietly stocking discard-matters and reanimation fuel. The lineage is long and specific: Merfolk Looter did it free, Looter il-Kor bolted on evasion so the loot rode a connection trigger, and this sits in the grindier corner of the family, where the free activation is gone and every loop after the first is a deliberate mana investment rather than a passive upkeep habit. It is the most disciplined version of the effect: slower, but the one that asks you to actually want each card you see.