Pacification Array

Tapping is a weak verb on its own: a creature that taps a single attacker once is a chump-blocker with extra steps. What turns that weak verb into a soft-removal engine is permanence, and this one buys it cheaply: a one-mana artifact that then asks two mana and a tap each turn to hold a creature or artifact down. It never destroys anything, so the board never tilts permanently in your favor; instead it neutralizes one permanent per turn, indefinitely, as long as you can spare the recurring two mana. The functional cousins are the tappers, the line of creatures from Master Decoy forward that pacify by tapping rather than killing, except those bodies die to spot removal and this one sits in the artifact slot, harder to pick off and untouched by creature sweepers. The colorless identity is what makes it travel: white and blue keep most of the game's flexible tap effects, but this hands a mono-red or mono-green deck the same soft-lock tool without bending its colors. The honest limit is what tapping actually does, and how long it lasts. It can freeze a key blocker or keep an attacker home, but a tapped permanent untaps on its controller's next untap step, so this is a recurring tax on their board, not a lock: you re-tap each turn to keep the pressure. It also does not silence a creature's activated abilities, since tapping only bites the abilities that demand tapping as part of their cost. It buys tempo and time, one permanent at a time, and asks you to keep paying for it.