Midnight Clock

A mana rock with a doomsday clock stapled to it, and the clock is the entire design bargain. Left alone it taps for a single blue while adding one hour counter per upkeep, a payoff measured in whole turn cycles rather than something you build a curve around. The lever that makes it worth the slot is the ability to spend spare mana pushing the timer forward, converting an idle board into progress toward the reset. That reset is the payload: shuffling your hand and graveyard back into the library before drawing seven is not a refill but a full reload, hauling discarded and spent cards back alongside the fresh draw. The distinction matters to decks that dump their hand fast and want everything returned, and to grindy shells patient enough to invest extra mana accelerating the count once the board has stabilized. But the twelfth counter is not an offer, it is a deadline. The trigger is mandatory and the counters accrue on their own, so the choice you actually control is how fast to reach the threshold, not whether to fire it once you arrive. The exile clause makes the whole thing a single-use event per copy: no recurring engine, just one committed detonation. The real skill is timing your acceleration so the twelfth hour lands when your library is worth reshuffling and your hand is worth throwing back, because when the clock hits noon you are drawing seven whether you like it or not.