Coma Veil

The lineage of "stuck on its side" enchantments runs back to Paralyze and Exhaustion: soft removal that buys permanence by surrendering efficiency, leaving the target on the battlefield rather than answering it cleanly. The mechanism here is narrower than it looks, though, and that narrowness is the whole story. It does not tap the enchanted permanent; it only revokes the untap step. Enchant an untapped creature and your opponent still gets one attack, one tap ability, and (because blocking never taps) the ability to block on defense for as long as the aura stays attached. The lock only really clamps shut once the permanent is already tapped: then it stays tapped, indefinitely, as a body that cannot crew, cannot mana-tap, cannot swing again. That gap between "permanent under control" and "permanent neutralized" is what dates the design. Against modern removal that simply removes the thing, paying five mana to half-disable a creature reads as strictly worse in most board states, which is why this effect drifted to the margins as destruction got cheaper. The arguments that survive are specific: shutting off an artifact you cannot otherwise touch, or pinning a creature whose death trigger you would rather not provoke, leaving it alive and inert instead. A patient answer that still gives the opponent outs through bounce, sacrifice, or blink, priced for an era when five mana for conditional soft removal felt fair.