Statecraft

Combat becomes optional, and not just for your blockers. The fog effect here is permanent and asymmetric in a peculiar way: your creatures can swing into anything without dying in the red zone, but they also cannot deal combat damage, so the board freezes into a wall of attackers that bounce off everything they hit. The honest read is that this is a control card built on a creature requirement: it needs bodies to function, but those bodies are never the win condition. It buys time, neutralizes an aggressive board, and lets your creatures hold the line as immortal blockers while you grind toward whatever wins outside of combat: mill, decking, a noncombat finisher, alternate win conditions that do not care about the ground stalling out. The design tension is that it shuts off your own clock as thoroughly as your opponent's, which is why the card has always lived in builds that never intended to win by attacking in the first place. It belongs to a family of static fog enchantments that trade the ability to deal combat damage for the certainty of never taking it, a deal that only makes sense when your route to victory bypasses the combat step entirely.