Tidal Force

A free tapper stapled to a body that wants nothing to do with it. The trigger fires at the beginning of each upkeep, and that is the entire pitch: every upkeep in the game, yours and everyone else's, you get to tap or untap one permanent for no mana and no card. Only the controller chooses and acts; the effect triggers on all upkeeps but never hands the choice to anyone else. Compare a tapper you pay into, like Icy Manipulator, which charges for every activation: here the window arrives on schedule and costs nothing, so the value compounds passively across a full turn cycle. On an opponent's upkeep you can tap their attacker before combat so it stays home, freeze a mana source, or untap one of your own blockers to catch an alpha strike; on your own upkeep you can tap down whatever would have blocked your 7/7 as it swings. The tension is that the best targets are usually defensive while the body is built to attack, and at eight mana it lands long after the early plays a tapper most wants to punish. This is an engine for slow, grindy games where the mana is reachable and a repeated lock on one permanent snowballs. It never found a home in faster environments because the payoff scales with how many upkeeps you survive to use.