Orim's Cure

The alternative cost is the whole design conversation here: with a Plains in play, you can tap an untapped creature instead of spending mana, and a four-point damage shield arrives without touching a single colored source. That swap is the conceit. Prevention spells have always lived in an awkward reactive slot, dead on an empty stack and dependent on damage actually coming, so this one tries to pay for itself out of board presence rather than mana, leaving the rest of your turn fully funded. The resource it asks for, an untapped creature you were not going to attack with, is exactly what a white tempo deck tends to be holding back anyway, and the Plains requirement keeps the card mono-white in spirit even when no mana changes hands. This sits among a cluster of early-era Orim-named prevention spells circling the same idea: make instant-speed protection feel proactive by pricing it in creatures instead of lands. The flaw is the one every prevention spell carries: the shield only matters if damage is actually incoming, and against threats spread wide the one-shot buffer rarely lands on the swing that decides the game. The result reads as a cost-structure puzzle more than a card any format leaned on, which is roughly the verdict history handed the entire prevention-as-tempo experiment.