Homarid Warrior

A defensive mechanic dressed as protection. The activated ability hands the lobster shroud, but it pays for that untargetability twice: tapping it down and skipping a future untap step. That structure is the whole story. Shroud here is not the modern keyword that locks an opponent out of removal so a creature can keep attacking; it is a self-inflicted stasis, a way to weather one targeted spell while surrendering a full turn of board presence. You spend the body to keep the body, a strange exchange for something already this expensive to deploy. The design comes from an early stretch when downside-laden activations stood in for clean keyword shields, and the Homarid line in particular leaned on tidal, tempo-negative effects that punished the player as much as they protected. A five-mana 3/3 already asks a lot, and the ability does nothing to change a combat math problem or pressure a clock; it only answers the narrow case of an opponent pointing a single spell at it. What it documents is how not to price protection: tempo funds the whole transaction, the benefit is conditional, and the window in which it matters is small enough that the creature mostly stands around inert until the rare moment its one trick is worth the two-turn tax.