Mercurial Spelldancer

The unblockable clause is doing more than sneaking two power through: it guarantees the combat trigger, which is the whole engine. Storing oil counters off noncreature spells is easy on a spellslinger board, but the payoff has a deliberate throttle. Landing combat damage lets you spend two counters, and the copy doesn't fire on whatever spell prompted the removal: it waits for the next instant or sorcery you cast that turn, then duplicates it with fresh targets. That sequencing is the balancing act. A single connection buys a delayed copy, so you have to hold up a payoff spell after damage rather than just chaining threats, and the counters accumulate across turns rather than resetting, which lets patient builds bank against a future bomb. The oil-counter framework ties the reward to the same noncreature density that fuels a tempo shell, so you run the spells for their own sake and get paid for landing a hit while a good target is still in hand. Compared to older "copy your next spell" designs that gate the effect behind a one-shot enters-the-battlefield trigger, this one turns it into a repeatable dividend on a body that keeps attacking, provided the counters and the follow-up spell line up in the right order.