Ghosts of the Damned

Tap-to-shrink is one of the oldest design tools in black's kit, and this is the early, unglamorous version of it: a recurring -1/-0 nudge, repeatable each turn for the cost of a tap. The math is honest and the math is small. Against a 2/2, the tap turns a trade into a chump-block; against a 1/1, it neutralizes the attacker entirely until untap; against anything bigger, it does nothing the opponent will notice. The body is a 0/2 with a color-intensive cost, which tells you the rate was paid into the ability rather than the stats, and the ability was priced for a world where combat tricks were small and creatures were smaller. The Legends-era instinct on display is the urge to turn creatures into permanent-based effect engines: a tapper whose payoff is a fractional combat shift, charging full color-intensive mana for the privilege. The lineage runs forward through Icatian Javelineers, Master Decoy, and eventually the more efficient pingers and tappers that made this style of effect reliable. Read as a historical artifact, it shows how cautiously black's creature-shrinking was first costed; read as a card, the rate has not aged into playability.