Cho-Arrim Legate

Protection from black and a casting condition keyed to the white-versus-black land split are the same idea expressed twice: this is a creature built to embarrass one specific opponent. When an opponent controls a Swamp and you control a Plains, the 1/2 body deploys for nothing; the protection then leaves it unreachable by their targeted black removal, unblockable by their black creatures, and able to soak a black attacker without dying. It belongs to a cycle of Legates, each tuned to a different mismatch of basic lands, all sharing the same conceit: let the board state, rather than the mana, foot the bill. The white-against-black axis is the oldest rivalry in the color pie, and writing it into the casting requirement turns a flavor rivalry into a mechanical trap. The narrowness is the cost of all that upside. Outside the right land matchup the free cast simply does not exist, and what remains is a 1/2 you pay for and would seldom want. That conditionality was the entire design intent. These Legates were never built to be dependable; they reward a player who reads an opponent's basics and arranges the asymmetry, and punish the opponent who arrives with exactly the wrong land in play. A pure color-hosing creature dressed as a maindeck spell but shaped, from its protection keyword down to its free-cast clause, like a card that only earns its keep against one color of the pie.