Hour counter

Hour counter
[[File:{{#setmainimage:Time.svg}}|70x70px]]
Counter
Use	Count up or down for effect
Placed on	Enchantments, Artifacts
Introduced	Kaladesh
Last used	Alchemy: The Brothers' War
Statistics
3 counter creation cards 33.3% 33.3% 33.3%
Scryfall search
oracle:"Hour counter"

Hour counters are a type of counter introduced in Kaladesh. They are used on cards to count down or count up for some effect.

Description

Hour counters first appeared on Midnight Oil in Kaladesh. It is an enchantment that enters the battlefield with 7 Hour counters limiting the player's maximum hand size to the number of counters while penalizing discarding via lost life. At each draw step, it allows for the drawing of an additional card while two hour counters are removed from it.

They appeared once again in Throne of Eldraine on Midnight Clock with a different usage. This time the artifact gained an hour counter on each upkeep building up to 12 while having the ability to add additional ones for some mana. When it hit 12, the player would shuffle their hand and graveyard into their library and draw a new hand. Rusko, Clockmaker from Alchemy: The Brothers' War later became the first creature to use hour counters with it directly adding the counters to all Midnight Clocks under the players control whenever the player cast a non-creature spell.

Trivia

• In Magic Online, the counter is colored green as it's considered a positive effect and shares its icon with Age, Depletion, Delay, Eon, Fade, Hourglass, Isolation, and Time counters.