Gnarled Effigy

Slow death by attrition, packaged into a colorless mana sink. The total commitment is steep: four mana to cast, then four more and a tap every time you want to fire it, with each activation moving a single point of toughness off a target. That math reads badly in a vacuum, which is exactly the point of the design. This is a repeatable removal engine that survives the early game's interaction and turns excess mana into an inevitability machine in the late game, grinding down anything that sticks across multiple turns. Because each activation drops a -1/-1 counter rather than dealing damage, the kill is permanent and accrues: two activations finish a two-toughness creature for good, and the shrink also clips an opponent's combat math and feeds anything that cares about creatures with counters on them. The artifact frame is what lets it slot anywhere, available to any deck willing to pay the colorless tax regardless of color identity. It belongs to a class of grindy, mana-hungry toolbox pieces built for the player who expects to still be casting things on turn ten: a card that does nothing fast and everything eventually.