Impede Momentum

Three stun counters is the number that changes the math. Tapping a creature has always been temporary by nature: it comes back untapped on its controller's next turn, so a plain tap effect buys exactly one attack step. Stun counters rewrite that contract. Each counter eats an untap, so this holds a creature down through three of its controller's turns before it can act again, and only then if nothing has since added more. That converts a one-shot tempo play into something closer to soft removal, because a creature that cannot untap for three turns is, functionally, off the board for most of a game's decisive window. What it does not do is answer the threat permanently or interact with anything that sidesteps the tapped state, so it sits closer to a durable Frost Breath than to true removal: it neutralizes a body without spending the counterspell or exile that a hard answer would. The scry is the small consolation that pays back a sliver of the tempo it just spent, smoothing a draw step so the card is not pure reaction. The design's interest is in how it stretches a mechanic (tapping) that the rules treat as the least sticky form of control into something that behaves almost like disabling equipment, using the stun-counter framework to make impermanence durable.