Elder Druid

Four mana and a tap of its own buys one untap of a target artifact, creature, or land, which in practice means firing a tap-based ability a second time in a single turn: a fresh charge for Icy Manipulator, another activation of a mana rock, one more spin of whatever tapped-to-use permanent the era had on offer. The targeting clause cuts both ways, so the druid also functions as disruption, freezing a blocker, a land, or an opposing Icy in place. What dates the effect is also what disciplines it: the activation taps the druid itself, but because it can target any creature it can untap itself, so with enough mana it can loop, though the four-mana price gates each iteration. The math only justifies the activation when the permanent you untap earns back more than the combined cost, and the value pieces available alongside it in 1995 rarely repaid that price. Later untappers compressed the same trick onto cheaper bodies or folded it into a single activation, but the underlying idea (a creature whose ability resets another permanent's tap state) traces back through this neighborhood. It is the slow, expensive ancestor of a mechanic Magic spent the next two decades sharpening into something efficient enough to build a deck around.