Unstable Mutation

For one blue mana, the enchanted creature is suddenly the largest thing on the battlefield; a few upkeeps later, the Aura has eaten the body it landed on, the +3/+3 finally swamped by accumulating -1/-1 counters. That self-immolation is the entire point: a fuse, not a buff. Blue's color pie has rarely been allowed to print creature pump at this rate, and the counter clock is the cost the design pays for letting it: a built-in decay that retires the threat without requiring an opponent to answer it. The counters land on the body, not the Aura, so they persist independently of the enchantment: bounce or destroy the Aura mid-decay and the creature keeps every -1/-1 counter it has accrued. That bookkeeping detail is what makes the timer feel inevitable; there is no resetting the clock by removing the thing that started it. The principle is one Magic has returned to repeatedly: a spell whose drawback is a timer rather than a tempo loss, paid by the permanent it improves rather than the caster. The clock is slow, too. Against a small body the +3/+3 outruns the counters for several turns before toughness reaches zero, so the decay reads less like a downside and more like an expiration date stamped on a borrowed threat. The rate is one most blue decks have long since outgrown, but the template (rent power now, lose the asset later) is the part worth studying.