So, my suggestion for making the current behavior not misunderstood as a bug would be:
- Make the active effect ONLY available when you have played ONE card (so you can't spend on it when it would do nothing). Ideally an animation on the card would show that the active effect is newly available so my dumb brain doesn't play two cards and lock myself out.
- If there will ever be an effect which changes the counter value, make the counter visible on the card itself, rather than only on the tooltip.