Mendicant Core, Guidelight

Azorius has never been the color pair that pushes damage through the red zone; it stalls, it draws, it controls. Handing it an artifact-copy payoff and then gating that payoff behind an aggression counter is a deliberate provocation. The doubling only comes online at max speed, and the counter starts at 1, so reaching 4 demands three increments, each requiring an opponent to lose life on one of your turns. White and blue do not naturally generate that resource, which means the deck has to either splash for reach or lean on incidental drain to climb the track. That friction is the whole design bet: whether speed, a mechanic tethered to attrition, can anchor a payoff in the two colors least built to earn it. The variable power keeps the creature honest in the meantime, scaling with the artifact density you were already assembling rather than promising a body you have not built toward. Get the counter to max and the ceiling turns genuinely warping: one extra mana to copy a mana rock, an equipment, or any value artifact you cast converts a fair curve into a runaway. The reason this reads as more than a fine two-drop is that structural gamble, the wager that the reward waiting once the track fills is worth the labor of moving a counter the colors were never designed to move.