Mirror of Galadriel
Five generic mana for a scry-and-draw is a rate nobody would tap out for, and that inflated sticker price is deliberate: each legendary creature you control shaves a mana off the activation, so the artifact only makes sense in decks where legends are the norm rather than the exception. That inverts the usual scaling problem. Most repeatable card-draw engines get more expensive as the game gets riskier; this one gets cheaper as your board develops, until three or four legends drop the activation to a mana or two and the Mirror becomes a per-turn cantrip. The trick is that it never reads as a payoff. It sits at two mana, deploys early, and does nothing the turn it arrives, banking on a board state you were building anyway. What earns it the slot is a genuine feedback loop with a legend-heavy plan: the same creatures that win the game also lower the price of refilling your hand to keep winning it. Absent that court of legends, it is a slow, colorless value tap you tax yourself to use; surrounded by one, it turns into a mana sink you actually want to activate every turn, which is a rarer payoff than the plain scry-then-draw line lets on.


