Ivory Mask
Shroud almost always lives on permanents; granting it to the player is the unusual move, and it changes what protection even means. Naming yourself as the protected object walls off targeted discard, edicts that point at you, face burn, and the long tail of "target opponent" effects that need the controller as their legal target. None of that touches the board, though: sweepers, attacking creatures, and any "each player" clause resolve untouched, because none of them target anything. That gap is the card's honest accounting, and it is the reason a four-mana standing enchantment ever made sense. The cost buys a recurring umbrella, but it commits the slot to a posture that accomplishes nothing against an empty stack or a Wrath. The subtler trap is shroud's symmetry as a keyword: protecting yourself also forbids spells and abilities that would target you for good, so targeted lifegain aimed at your own total, hexproof grants, and any beneficial "target player" effect are off the table too. Your creatures keep functioning as written, since pump and regeneration target permanents, not their controller. What looks like pure defense is really a contract: you surrender every spell and ability that could point at you, the helpful ones included, in exchange for the guarantee that the harmful ones can never land.
