Mystic Might

A pure artifact of Ice Age's enthusiasm for cumulative upkeep, a mechanic the set used to attach escalating taxes to permanents that would otherwise be undercosted. The design logic here is transparent: a repeatable combat trick stapled to a land for a single blue mana is a strong rate, so the set bolts on a payment that grows each turn until you can no longer afford to keep the engine running. The pump itself is colorless in flavor, a white-or-green effect dressed in blue because cumulative upkeep was the era's universal balancing valve rather than a color-pie consideration. What sinks it is the math of the payment curve against the payoff: by the time the upkeep has snowballed past two or three counters, you are spending more mana per turn to retain the enchantment than the +2/+2 is worth in a single combat, and the land-based delivery means losing the enchanted land to removal or sacrifice costs you both the trick and a mana source. Cumulative upkeep was a mechanic Wizards largely abandoned after the Ice Age block precisely because it produced cards like this: theoretically powerful first-turn investments whose own rules text guarantees they decay into liabilities. The card is a fossil of a balancing philosophy the game has since replaced with cleaner restrictions.