Enfeeblement

A static -2/-2 aura is among black's oldest patterns for permanent creature shrinkage, and the cost here tells you exactly how the era priced it: two black pips for a permanent that has to commit to a single target the turn it resolves. That commitment is the design tax. An aura sits on the battlefield as a known quantity, so it answers small creatures cleanly but invites the two-for-one when the enchanted creature is bounced, blinked, or simply traded away in combat: you have spent a card to shrink something that may not stay shrunk. Black has spent decades chasing the same effect on more flexible chassis, moving it onto instants and creatures that carry their own bodies, precisely because the aura version leaks card advantage in a way an instant-speed -2/-2 does not. What the aura form does offer is permanence: against a creature whose value lives in its stats, the debuff sticks for as long as the enchantment does, and the -2/-2 floor turns most early bodies into liabilities or outright kills the ones with two or less toughness. This is the unglamorous, color-pie-correct version of black's anti-creature toolkit: cheap, permanent, and structurally vulnerable, a card whose strategic axis is trading mana efficiency against the risk of being undone in a single moment.