Time Bomb

A time-delayed bomb that bills you for the wait. The damage scales with the number of upkeeps it survives, so the artifact's power is entirely a function of patience: drop it early, leave it alone, and every one of your upkeeps it sits untouched adds a point to the eventual blast against every creature and every player, including its controller. That symmetry is what keeps the card honest. This is not a one-sided sweeper; it is a doomsday clock that ticks against everyone, and the threat of detonation is meant to be as much a political lever as a removal spell. The slow accrual creates a window problem for everyone at once: the controller wants to fire it the instant the board math swings in their favor, while opponents are pressured to develop under a counter that climbs every one of your upkeeps whether they like it or not. The activation tax of one mana plus the tap-and-sacrifice gives it the brittleness of a single-use device, but the time counters give it an open-ended ceiling, which is the central trade. It belongs to the era's fascination with cumulative, board-state-altering artifacts that demand timing rather than reward raw efficiency, the kind of card whose interesting decision is never how to cast it but when, exactly, to let it go off.