Hindervines

A Fog with a loyalty test attached. The classic damage-prevention template stops all combat damage flat; this design carves out an exception for creatures wearing +1/+1 counters, which means it asks the caster to read the board before pulling the trigger. In a deck built around counter accumulation (graft, evolve, the +1/+1 synergy package this clearly belongs to), the asymmetry is the whole pitch: your developed, counter-laden attackers connect while the enemy's raw bodies bounce off. Used reactively, it becomes a blowout against an all-in alpha strike from a board that never had counters to begin with, turning a lethal swing into a wasted turn. The exemption cuts both ways, though: cast it across a mirror of counter-heavy boards and it does almost nothing, while in a creature-light shell it collapses back into a worse, conditional Fog. That conditionality is what keeps it out of the generic damage-prevention toolbox and pins it to a specific kind of deck. The instant-speed window matters too, since it can be held up through the entire combat phase and resolved after attackers are declared and blocks are assigned, when the opponent has already committed to a combat math that the card then quietly rewrites.