Sunken City

An anthem with a meter running. Mono-color anthems were a Crusade-era idea: pay once, then every creature of your color stands a little taller for the rest of the game. This one rewrites that bargain by attaching a recurring tax. The buff stays live only as long as you feed it two blue each upkeep, which is a steep recurring commitment in a color that wants to hold that mana open for reactive plays. The design tension is the whole card: a static +1/+1 to all blue creatures is a real board boost, but the upkeep payment competes directly with everything else blue wants to do with its mana, and the moment you can no longer afford it the enchantment falls off the table on its own. It is an early experiment in the upkeep-cost design language that defined the period: a generation of cards from this era priced their effects not as a flat cost but as a tariff you pay every turn or lose, forcing the player to decide each upkeep whether the effect is still worth more than the mana. As a flavor footnote, naming a blue enchantment that demands constant tribute "Sunken City" lands cleanly; the city stays above water exactly as long as you keep paying for it.