Farsight Mask

The conditional baked into this artifact is its whole strategic axis: it pays you only when an opponent's source connects, which means it converts incoming damage into a resource and quietly disincentivizes the attack. Sit behind it and a swing for two is now a swing for two and a card, so the rational opponent holds back. It triggers on any source, not just creatures, so burn and direct-damage plans feed it as readily as a board of attackers; the punishment scales with how badly the opponent wants to push damage through. The untapped clause is the lever the design hands the opponent in return: it has no activated ability, so it sits open by default, but a tapper or a tax effect can find a narrow window to switch the engine off for a turn without committing to removal. Most opponents will not bother with that finesse, of course, since artifact destruction is plentiful and answers the problem outright; the rider reads more as a deliberate exploit for the table than as a common line of attack. Where most card-advantage engines ask you to do something, this one asks you to endure something and turns the enduring into draws. It is the rare engine built for the player on the back foot, the one already taking hits and looking for a reason to keep taking them.