Pippin, Guard of the Citadel
Protection has always traded on selection: the color you name, the type you dodge, all locked in when the effect resolves. Reprinting that flexibility onto a repeatable tap ability moves it onto a different axis. Once per turn, this hands another creature protection from a card type of your choosing, so the same activation answers a burn spell on one turn (protection from instant), then peels a hostile Aura or Equipment off a creature the next (protection from enchantment or artifact), then clears a path to lethal by naming creature outright. The choice of card type rather than color is the wrinkle worth sitting with: protection from artifacts or enchantments is a defensive line most single-target effects never offer, and delivering it at instant speed reshapes how a removal window or a combat step resolves. The cost is a tap, which matters less than it looks: a creature can be declared as a blocker and then tapped to grant protection, so you can hold a blocker back and still fire the ability once combat is joined. Vigilance covers the attacking case, letting the body swing and still sit ready to shield. Ward taxes anyone hoping to answer the source before it earns its keep. It is a support piece, not a threat: a 2/2 whose job is making one other creature untouchable for exactly as long as it matters, then untapping to do it again. The design lands closer to a repeatable, targeted, type-agnostic descendant of the old protection-granting tricks than to anything that wins on its own stats.





