Nacre Talisman

Three mana to untap a single permanent, available whenever any player (controller included) casts a white spell, is a rate that idles for long stretches and never compounds into an engine. The untap is unrestricted, hitting lands, creatures, or other artifacts, which on paper hints at a pseudo-vigilance enabler or a way to keep a mana rock online. The economics undercut the fantasy: even in a deck built to cast white spells every turn, paying three to free up one permanent rarely nets you anything you would not have had by simply leaving the permanent untapped. That steep cost is the design's load-bearing restriction; a free untap-a-land-each-turn effect at this slot would have been a real value loop, and second-set design deliberately priced the safety in, tethering the untap to a spell cast and a three-mana toll rather than letting it fire on demand. The artifact sits in a small Ice Age cycle, each member watching for a different color of spell and offering the same fixed untap. The Talisman name predates the far more famous mana-fixing Talisman cycle by years and shares nothing with those rocks beyond the word, a coincidence of nomenclature that has quietly confused collectors ever since.