Holy Mantle

Protection from creatures is the quiet half of this Aura, and it is the half that decides games. The +2/+2 is the lure; the keyword is the lock. A creature wearing this cannot be blocked by any creature, cannot block-trade with any creature, and cannot be targeted, enchanted, or damaged by one either. Against a board of blockers it functions as evasion that no amount of toughness answers, and against a deck leaning on creature-based removal it makes the enchanted body untouchable by their best fighters and chump blockers. The cost of that wall is its narrowness: protection from creatures does nothing against burn, edicts, board wipes, or any instant or sorcery that points at the creature, since none of those is a creature. And stacking four mana of investment onto a single body is the classic Aura tax (lose the creature, lose the card too). The design lives in the gap between the two clauses. A pump spell that only made something bigger would be ignorable; a pure protection Aura would be too defensive to matter. Welding them turns a midsize attacker into a clock the opponent cannot trade with in combat, the sort of overcommitment a single sweeper or a one-mana kill spell punishes hardest. It rewards picking the right creature and the right moment, and folds the instant the opponent reaches for an answer that never needed a creature to do its work.