Pacifism

The template white removal spell, and the one that defined what "removal" means in a color that does not get to destroy things. The design solves a specific problem: white needs to answer attackers without killing them, so the card neutralizes the threat while leaving the body on the battlefield. That residue does all the work of keeping the card honest. The creature still exists, still counts for anything that cares about creature count, still triggers whatever fired when it arrived, and recovers the moment the Aura is bounced or destroyed. The trade looks like card parity on its face (a two-mana enchantment for whatever you stick it on), but the structure invites the opponent to break even or come out ahead: any creature that already paid its way before it could attack got answered for free, and any bounce or enchantment removal hands two cards back for your one. It also does nothing to a creature whose value lives in an activated ability rather than its combat presence: a tapper, a mana dork, anything that wins without swinging. Decades of white interaction read as patches on exactly these holes. Faith's Fetters bolts on a life swing and widens the target to any nonland permanent; Arrest shuts off activated abilities too; Journey to Nowhere and Banishing Light exile instead, sidestepping the recursion problem entirely. Each one fixes a gap this card leaves open, which is the clearest measure of how foundational the original is.