Replicating Ring

A three-mana any-color rock is a rate players have known for a long time, but this one carries a delayed detonation: every upkeep it accrues a night counter, and on the eighth it wipes the counters clean and spawns eight more mana-producing artifacts alongside itself. The clock is what keeps the promise honest. Eight upkeeps is an eternity in most games, so the payoff is one you almost never live to collect; this reads as fixing with a ceiling filed away, not a ramp engine that reliably goes off. Worth noting that the original ring survives the reset, so the grindy game that does cross the threshold ends up with nine sources at once, not a one-for-eight swap. What it really trades on, though, is the snow supertype. As a snow artifact it feeds the mechanics that count snow permanents and the payoffs that want them, giving a color-fixing rock a second identity that a comparable colorless mana rock cannot offer. The night-counter track is less a plan than a slow tick toward something, a reminder that the card is always working toward a threshold most games end before it crosses. Everywhere else, it is dependable fixing with an upside nobody bothers to track.