Hampering Snare

The -2/-0 is the tell of a card built for a specific job: not to kill anything, but to blunt an alpha strike. Toughness-based removal answers the trap; this answers the swing. Shaving two power off every attacker your opponents control can turn a lethal board into a survivable one, or drop a would-be blocker below the threshold that makes your own attack safe. It is a Fog that lets damage through, priced for the games where you can afford to trade some life but not all of it. The reason it earns a slot despite being narrow is the cycling clause: on the turns where nobody is attacking, where a mass power-shrink does nothing, it becomes a card draw for two mana instead of a dead hold. That is the design discipline behind the whole species of combat instant like this one: a floor that keeps the card from ever being a total blank, so you can run it as insurance without paying for it in dead draws. The effect only touches creatures your opponents control, so it never clips your own attackers on the counterswing, which matters when the plan is to survive one turn and win on the next.