Defend the Rider

Modal green protection has a long lineage, with Blossoming Defense as the obvious touchstone, and the first mode here reads like a broader cousin: hexproof and indestructible on any permanent you control, not just a creature, for a single green mana. That widening matters because it lets one card shield an artifact, an enchantment, or a planeswalker from a targeted answer at instant speed, jobs a pure combat trick can't touch. The second mode is where the design earns its keep. The Pilot token it makes reads as a 1/1 but counts as a 3-power body when saddling a Mount or crewing a Vehicle, so a lone token can turn on machinery that would otherwise demand a bigger crew. That reframes the card as a choice between a reactive save and a proactive enabler, and the two halves genuinely compete: leave it up as insurance and the token may never hit the board; spend it early to crew something and the removal you were hedging against lands clean. Green rarely gets to pivot between defense and development at one mana, and that flexibility is what the card is built around: a single spell that either answers a targeted threat or advances a board running on vehicles and mounts, decided by whatever the turn actually asks for.