Topiary Lecturer

A mana dork that pays itself forward: the same counters that grow the body also grow the mana. Increment reads as a generic scaling keyword until you notice the tap ability keys off power, so every counter is another green mana in the pool. A vanilla one-drop dork produces one mana until it dies; this one starts at one green (its printed power) and climbs each time you spend more mana on a spell than either its power or toughness, whichever is smaller. That "or" is the wrinkle worth pressing: because the trigger fires when mana spent exceeds power or toughness, you only need to clear the lower of the two. Starting at 1 power against 2 toughness, spending two mana already beats the power bar and drops a counter, so the early growth is nearly free and only stiffens once the counters push the smaller stat higher. What it rewards is a deck spending above that ever-rising floor cast after cast, converting each spell into a permanent bump in future mana. And since the payoff is a mana ability, activation skips the stack and is not restricted to your own turn: tapping it in response to something, to fuel an opponent's-turn instant or a flash creature, is entirely available. Fragility is the tradeoff; with only two toughness it stays an acceleration piece first, its green output a direct readout of how greedily you have been spending.