Combat Medic

A 0/2 body that pays mana to shave damage one point at a time, this is white's early take on the prevention-shield cleric: a defensive permanent that converts mana into incremental survival rather than a fixed wall. The design is honest about its limits. Each activation costs two mana to stop a single point, so the rate punishes you for relying on it under real pressure, and the targeting clause lets it protect a creature or a player rather than committing to either role. That breadth is the whole pitch: it can soak a point off an incoming attacker, blunt a burn spell, or keep a teammate's combatant alive through a trade, all from the same line of text. What it cannot do is keep up. Against any board that deals damage in chunks, paying mana per point is a losing exchange, which is exactly why prevention as a mechanic drifted toward fixed shields and one-shot effects in later design: the per-point pump-style activation is too slow to scale. The card endures as a record of how white once approached damage mitigation, with a body that does nothing on offense and asks you to hold mana open to keep something alive. It reads less like a card you build around and more like evidence of a design philosophy white has largely moved past.