Minas Morgul, Dark Fortress

Shadow was a Tempest-era evasion keyword that split combat into two sealed lanes: a creature with it could block or be blocked only by other creatures with shadow, fighting a private war that anything on the ground could neither reach nor obstruct. Resurrecting that rule as a targeted effect is the clever move here, and the direction it points depends entirely on whose creature you choose. Aim the shadow counter at a blocker and it can no longer stop your ground attackers: it has been exiled from the ground war, alive but useless as a wall. Aim it at your own attacker and you have handed it near-total evasion, since no non-shadow defender can interpose. What the counter never does is kill: the creature stays on the battlefield, which matters both ways, because there is no death trigger to hand an aristocrat deck and no removed body to feel the loss. The cost keeps the effect honest without a hard cap: the land enters tapped, taps for black only, and each activation is a four-mana tax you can pay at instant speed, so every counter demands a full mana investment. The lockout is porous, too: put shadow on multiple creatures and any two of them, sharing the keyword, can still block and trade with each other. The added Wraith type is tribal flavor doing no combat work; the shadow keyword alone governs who fights whom. The result is a utility land that revives a dead evasion mechanic and repurposes it as a repeatable, non-lethal lever on the combat step.