Illusionary Forces

A 4/4 flier for four mana was a genuinely large evasive body for its era, the kind of clock that ends games quickly if left unanswered. The catch is that you only rent it. Cumulative upkeep was Ice Age's experiment in pricing aggression with time instead of mana: cheap to cast, but the tax climbs one age counter every turn until it outruns whatever your blue sources can cover. The first turn of ownership costs a single blue; the fifth costs five, and the curve compounds past sustainability faster than most boards can convert the pressure into a win. The design bet is that the body buries the opponent before the upkeep buries you, which reframes the card as a race against your own mana base rather than against your opponent's life total. That same friction is why the mechanic never anchored a competitive deck the way flying or counterspells did: a creature that grows harder to keep every turn fights the tempo it is supposed to provide. The threat answers itself, and the answer lives in your own upkeep step rather than in your opponent's hand. It is a road not taken in creature design, an honest attempt at a self-correcting evasive threat, abandoned because the correction lands on the player who cast it.