Haunting Wind

A black answer to the artifact decks the set was built to enable, structured as a tax meter rather than a lock: every time an artifact is asked to do work, its controller takes a point of damage. The two clauses are engineered to leave no gap, and the way they overlap is the design's whole point. The first catches any artifact that taps, which sweeps up the bulk of the era's hardware, including the Moxen and other accelerants whose abilities carry a tap symbol. The second closes the remaining door on activations that never tap at all, such as sacrifice costs and uncosted abilities. The net effect is hard to dodge: nearly any time an artifact operates, its controller bleeds. The damage per trigger is small, but the trigger surface on an artifact-dense board is enormous, so the punishment scales to how hard the opponent leans on the archetype. A deck spinning a fistful of Moxen and a Mishra's Workshop every turn pays a steady toll just for functioning. At four mana it was never going to land before those engines came online, so it reads less as a hoser than an attrition clock, built to make a fast artifact deck pay for its own speed. The damage is real damage, so it can be turned aside by prevention effects, but the life loss it deals still feeds anything that cares about an opponent losing life. An early example of the "your engine taxes you" pattern black would return to for decades.