Insight Engine

The math gets ugly fast in the way that only accelerating card draw does. The first activation nets one card, the second two, the third three: a triangular sequence that turns a slow-looking rock into a runaway engine if it survives a few turns. That escalation is the whole design tension. Each activation costs two mana and a tap, so the ceiling is gated by how much total mana you can pour through it across a game, and every stored counter advertises exactly how dangerous the next activation will be. The banked counters do not decay if you skip an activation; they sit there permanently, which means the real threat is cumulative and the real answer is destroying the artifact before the counters have grown. Break the tempo one way and the engine merely stalls; remove the permanent and the entire stored progression vanishes with it. Crucially, the draw ability is instant-speed, which changes the calculus of any removal aimed at it: hold up the two mana and a tap, and you can crack one last activation in response to the removal spell, banking the counter and its cards before the artifact leaves. That salvage window is the escape hatch the whole clock leans on. Unlike a flat one-card-per-turn source, this one asks you to commit mana before it pays and keep committing to compound, and that visible, ongoing commitment is what an opponent must race to punish before the numbers get away from them.