Justiciar's Portal

White flicker has almost always lived at instant speed (Cloudshift, Momentary Blink, and their kin all hold up in the same window), so what distinguishes this one is not the timing but the combat rider bolted onto it. The first strike clause turns a protection trick into a two-mana instant that can also win a fight, but it comes with a strict sequencing demand: the returning creature only shapes a combat it is still part of afterward, so the blink has to resolve before blockers are declared. Flicker a creature that has already been assigned as a blocker and it leaves combat entirely, deals no damage, and the first strike accomplishes nothing for that exchange. The productive window is earlier: reset the body before the declare-blockers step so it comes back clean, its enters trigger firing again, damage wiped, auras and equipment fallen off, and first strike already applied. What you pay for that is total newness. Counters and attachments fall away with the effects you wanted gone, though static and global effects still apply to the returned object; the creature comes back summoning sick unless it has haste, so it cannot turn around and swing that same turn. That constraint steers the card toward creatures whose value front-loads into the enters trigger rather than accruing on the board over time: a removal-dodge that behaves like a combat trick, and a combat trick that resets a body like a flicker spell.