Forced Worship

Pacifism shaped to pull a single tooth: where the older Aura locks a creature out of both attacks and blocks, this one only forbids the swing. The defender stays a defender, which is the whole point of the asymmetry. Against an aggressive board this reads as half a removal spell, but the design is built for the controlling pilot who wants to neutralize an attacker without surrendering its presence on defense, and who values the bounce clause more than a permanent stop. That activated cost to return the Aura to hand is the genuinely unusual piece: most attack-denial enchantments are fire-and-forget, content to sit until the creature dies or the enchantment is destroyed. Here the controller can lift the lock at will, reusing it as the board reshuffles, picking off whichever threat is most dangerous turn to turn rather than committing the answer to one body forever. It also gives the pilot an out against bounce-punishing tricks and a way to dodge an enchantment-removal blowout by picking the Aura up first. The friction is that the recurring tax wants mana you would often rather spend elsewhere, and an Aura that can't kill is always a tempo gamble against a creature that can be sacrificed or flickered. What it offers in exchange is flexibility no one-and-done removal spell provides: a soft lock you own, rather than rent.