Wilfred Mott

A payoff that starts nearly worthless and compounds toward inevitable. The first upkeep looks at a single card off the top; each turn the ability adds another time counter, so the dig widens by one and reaches five or six by the late midgame, at which point it is dropping a free nonland permanent with mana value three or less onto the board every turn. The 2/4 body exists to survive rather than swing, and the entire design rides on that toughness holding while the counters stack. Herein lies the card's central vulnerability: the reward scales with how long it sits on the battlefield, which turns it into the most valuable target on your side for an opponent's removal, and nothing on the card protects it. Answer it the turn after it lands and the exchange is card for card. Let it climb to five or six counters and it has quietly buried the opponent under free three-drops. The mana-value ceiling is what shapes the deckbuilding: it will never dig your bombs onto the table, so the reward accrues to a board stocked with cheap permanents worth deploying a beat ahead of curve. The counter is both the accelerant and the clock the opponent is racing, and every turn it lives the peek deepens while the pressure to kill it climbs.