Vhati il-Dal

The clever part is the "or" buried in the wording: tapping points at one creature and either sets its base power to 1 or its base toughness to 1, your choice, and those are two very different weapons hung off the same activation. Choose toughness 1 and you've turned an opposing fatty into something any ping or chump-block can erase; choose power 1 and you've defanged the attacker without killing it, neutralizing its damage while leaving the body in play. Because this sets a base value (Layer 7b) rather than removing every bonus, a creature still keeps its +1/+1 counters, Auras, and Equipment, which apply afterward; aim the toughness mode at a 6/6 with a +3/+3 Aura and you leave a 9/4, not a 1/1. The right read is that it caps the engine's natural growth, not that it strips a creature naked, and it resets each turn for free, making it a recurring suppression valve rather than a one-shot effect. The repeatability is the design tension: a 3/3 that can declaw something every turn at no mana cost asks the opponent to find an answer to the answer. Tempest's design era leaned hard on this kind of asymmetric attrition tool, packaging board control into a cheap frame. The tap symbol and summoning sickness keep it honest: one target per turn, and it has to survive being the obvious removal magnet before it ever starts working.