Foggy Nelson, On Retainer

The bodyguard clause is the whole play here: at instant speed, this steps between a spell and its target, hands the creature you actually care about a permanent boost and a turn's worth of hexproof, and leaves a 1/3 lawyer standing behind to hold the line. Flash is what converts a workmanlike counters-matter effect into a reactive tool. An opponent points removal at your commander or your key engine creature; you respond by seating this on the battlefield, and the target grows and slips out of range in the same breath. The protection is narrow by design (only against opponents' spells and abilities, only your own creature, only this turn), which keeps it a save rather than a lock. Where a plain protection spell evaporates once the danger passes, this leaves a body and a counter behind: the mana you spent stays on the table the way a one-shot fog or a targeted Snakeskin Veil never would. It plays like the recurring role its name suggests, the counsel who shows up exactly when someone is about to get hit, does the defensive work, and stays in the room afterward. That combination (a defensive trigger stapled to a persistent, if unimpressive, permanent) is a compact bit of design: it rewards holding up mana without asking you to leave a card in hand that does nothing on an empty stack.