Black Ward

One white mana buys a permanent shield against most black removal spells, blockers, and damage sources, with no card disadvantage beyond the Aura itself. That rate is the real fossil here: a window into how cheaply Wizards was willing to sell a hard answer to an entire color in 1993, when color hosers were priced like ordinary spells rather than narrow sideboard concessions. Black Ward is one of five single-color protection Auras from the original set, a cycle distinct from the Circle of Protection enchantments people often confuse them with. The cycle shares a templating clause clarifying that the protection it grants does not turn against the Aura itself, and that line is not idle even here: a color-changing effect like Deathlace could turn this Aura black, at which point its own protection-from-black would peel it off the moment it resolved if the clause were absent. The wording is the cycle's insurance against exactly that interaction, written once into all five from a single mold. The design has never returned in its original shape because the modern game prices color hosers very differently; its descendants are conditional one-ofs with riders, downsides, or split costs. This is the unvarnished version, kept on the shelf as a record of what a one-mana answer to a whole color used to look like before the rules team learned to be careful about it.