Captain America, Super-Soldier

The shield counter is the whole conceit, and it does double duty in a way most protection payloads don't. Read the counter as a hit-point buffer first: it soaks the first damage or destroy effect aimed at Captain America, so a three-damage burn spell or a targeted kill spell peels the counter instead of the body, and only then is he a plain 3/2 with first strike. But the same counter is also a broadcast switch. As long as it sits on him, you and every other Hero you control gain hexproof, which means the counter that keeps him alive is also what shields both you and the rest of the team, and stripping his counter is what opens all of that up. That coupling creates a satisfying decision tree for the opponent: to break into your Heroes or to point removal and burn at your face, they first have to spend a resource knocking the counter off Captain America, and only their second interaction lands where they actually want it. Note the elegance of the exclusion: Captain America himself never has hexproof, so he is always the legal, obligatory target, the door everyone else hides behind. First strike on a 3/2 keeps him relevant in the early combats where the counter is most likely to come off, letting him trade up or survive a swing a lesser body would lose. A team-and-player protection engine gated behind a resource the opponent must actively dismantle, rather than a static toughness they can simply overpower.