Ring of Valkas

Two mana for haste-on-a-stick was the explicit sell, but the upkeep counter is what gives this Equipment a second gear: equip it to a red creature and it grows every turn it survives, turning a temporary tempo boost into a slow snowball. That conditional clause is the whole tension. The haste rider works on anything; the growth only pays out in red, so the card is built to reward committing to a color rather than just splashing the Equipment as generic reach. It belongs to a family of color-gated Equipment from the same design era, each pairing a universal keyword with a bonus that only triggers for one color's creatures, a deliberate nudge toward tribal-by-color decks rather than colorless goodstuff piles. The cheap equip cost matters more than the upkeep timing here: on your next main phase you can move it onto a fresh threat for one mana after the last carrier dies, and haste means that new creature swings immediately. The catch is in the trigger window: the counter accrues on your turn, not on attack, so a creature that dies before your upkeep banks nothing, and the bonus is too slow to matter in the race it was meant to accelerate. The result is a piece that reads aggressive but plays grindy: best when you have a steady stream of red bodies to keep re-equipping, underwhelming as a one-shot finisher.