Embargo

Stasis without the upkeep tax on the right side of the table: where Stasis freezes everything and forces its controller to feed it mana each turn or watch the lock break, Embargo locks down only nonland permanents and asks for a flat two life per upkeep instead. That difference reshapes who the prison hurts. Lands keep untapping, so the Embargo player can still cast spells while opponents' creatures and mana rocks stay tapped after one use. The two-life upkeep is the clock the design hangs the lock on: it is not a maintenance cost you can pay or skip but a guaranteed bleed, which means a soft lock here is always racing against the controller's own life total rather than against a mana investment. The half-symmetry is the quiet trick. Both players' nonland permanents are frozen, but the deck built around Embargo plans to operate off lands and instants while the opponent's board, which is mostly creatures, goes inert. It is a sideways prison piece: not the airtight stop that defined the era's hard-lock decks, but a self-terminating one, balanced by the fact that the controller is the only player guaranteed to be losing something every turn it stays on the battlefield.