Momentum

The fantasy is a creature that grows every turn until it ends the game; the reality is an Aura that hands the opponent a free two-for-one the moment they have an answer. That tension is the whole story. The growth counters accumulate on the Aura rather than the creature, so the size is real and persistent, but it lives on the most fragile arrangement in the game: a single removal spell on the host takes the Aura, every counter, and the card you spent attaching it. The "may" on the upkeep trigger is a small concession to control, letting the enchanted creature hold a fixed size when you would rather not telegraph the threat, but it never solves the structural problem, that you have committed three mana and a card to something one answer undoes. Green has chased this build-your-own-bomb idea repeatedly, and the lesson the color kept relearning is that incremental Aura growth is too slow against decks that interact and too redundant against decks that do not. The cruelest part of the math is that the counters offer no escape hatch: they track on a permanent that resets to zero the instant it leaves play, so there is no recovery line, no recast that salvages the work. The whole investment evaporates in a single beat. It is a card built around a counter mechanic that the very card type fights against, which is why the rate has never been enough to overcome the downside.