Flickering Ward

The genius here is that the protection clause carves out an explicit exception for itself: enchanted creature gains protection from the chosen color, but the Aura stays attached anyway. Without that line, an Aura granting protection from white would fall off the moment it resolved, since protection means "can't be enchanted by" the chosen color. By writing the self-exemption into the card, the design turns a contradiction into a reusable tool. The recursion ability carries the rest of the load: paying one white returns the Aura to hand, so the color choice is never locked in. The same card answers a black removal spell this turn and a red blocker the next, rebought as the board changes. That bounce-and-replay loop also dodges sorcery-speed enchantment removal cleanly, since the Aura can simply leave in response. What it really is, structurally, is a reconfigurable color hoser stapled to evasion: protection grants unblockability against the chosen color, soaks damage from it, and shrugs off targeted spells of it, all selectable on demand. The price for that flexibility is the white-per-cycle tax and the single-creature commitment, which keeps the card honest. It is a piece of permanent-based interaction that behaves like an instant, a design that rewards reading protection as the layered keyword it actually is rather than the simple shield it looks like.