Powerleech

A pure hate card from the era when Wizards still believed color identity should punish the wrong choices outright. The set that introduced Magic to its first real artifact problem (the Mishra's Workshop openers, the Mox-fueled curves, the Su-Chi and Tetravus midrange) also shipped this two-mana enchantment as the green answer: not removal, not a counter, but a tax meter that ticks every time the artifact deck does its thing. The design is structurally interesting in a way modern hosers rarely are. It catches both halves of how artifacts of the period generated value: the tap, which covers mana rocks turning sideways and an opponent pointing an Icy Manipulator or aiming a Winter Orb's lock, and the no-tap activation, which catches abilities paid with mana rather than the symbol. Splitting the trigger across both vectors means the opponent cannot simply swap to a different artifact subtype and route around it. The rate is modest by intention: a life per trigger is the kind of number that adds up across a long game rather than racing a single keystone. That choice locates the card squarely in the Antiquities design conversation about whether the answer to a broken card type should be a sword or a slow bleed. Green got the bleed, and the flavor (a leech draining power from machines) matches the mechanic with a precision the set was not always known for.