Maddening Wind

Two damage at the start of the opponent's upkeep, routed not through the creature it enchants but through that creature's controller. Green rarely gets to point burn at a player's life total, and the design dodges the color's restrictions by laundering the damage through an Aura: the creature is the legal target, the controller takes the hit. The escalating green tax is the lever that keeps this from being a free drain. Each turn adds an age counter, so sustaining the clock costs , then , then , until the upkeep outpaces what the rest of your turn can spare and you let it fall off. A flat "deal 2 each turn" with no payment would be a slow, unconditional bleed; the age counters convert that into a lease you eventually default on, and the tension is timing your own surrender before the tax cripples your tempo. The color assignment also marks how much green's identity has narrowed since: direct damage to a player now reads as unambiguously red, but Ice Age was still comfortable letting green reach the opponent's face through a sufficiently indirect angle. What stays consistent across every turn it survives is the meter ticking on both ends at once, the burn aimed outward and the cost climbing inward.