Angelic Protector

A flyer that taxes the act of pointing a spell at it. The trigger fires off any spell or ability that targets the creature, including the opponent's removal: the +0/+3 resolves before the kill spell does, so a 2/2 confronted with small burn or a shrink effect quietly survives on its own, no setup required. The buff is deliberately one-directional: pure toughness, gone at end of turn, and useless against anything that does not target (a board wipe walks straight through it). The wrinkle is that nothing restricts whose spell does the triggering. A controller can aim a cheap pump at their own Angelic Protector to firm up its toughness, or to bait a fight where the toughness bump rewrites the math after blockers are declared. So the survivability is not contingent on the opponent's cooperation at all; the player who controls the creature controls the trigger. What the design does is deter, not reward: every interaction the opponent attempts makes the body harder to kill in that same window, which means the cleanest line against it is often to leave it alone and answer it with something that never points a spell at it. The lever here (a creature that grows precisely when targeted) is one later cards have pulled in flashier shapes. This early version keeps it narrow and reactive: a small ask of whether the fight is worth the mana.