Invasion of Theros // Ephara, Ever-Sheltering
The tutor fires the instant this Siege lands, hunting down an Aura, God, or Demigod straight to hand; that part is free and unconditional. Everything else is a combat puzzle you have to win. When the battle enters, the opponent you designate has every reason to keep it alive, because defeating it is what exiles the Siege and casts the transformed side for nothing. You are the aggressor against your own permanent, and Ephara sits on the far end of that fight as the reward. Once she flips, she rewrites the tutor's payload into an engine: every subsequent enchantment you play draws a card, and lifelink plus indestructibility switch on only once you control three other enchantments. That threshold is the whole thesis in miniature. The search stocks your shell, and the back face pays off density rather than a single splashy target, so the card asks you to commit to a board of enchantments before her protection fully arrives. This is a deliberate retune of Ephara, God of the Polis, who draws whenever a creature enters under your control; same goddess, re-pointed from creature-tempo to enchantment-count. The friction between halves is the design's spine: immediate value on the search, earned value on the flip, with the protecting opponent standing between you and the deck-building payoff the tutor already gestured toward.
