Protect // Serve

Two combat tricks that read as ordinary instants apart, until you stack them in the same window. Protect is a defensive pump that survives most burn and trades up in combat; Serve is a one-sided shrink that turns an attacker or blocker into a non-threat without removing it. The interesting line comes from casting both halves together: your creature swings to +2/+4 while theirs loses six power, which folds an attack step and a defense step into a single instant-speed beat. That is the fuse wrinkle this Azorius pair exists to demonstrate. A split card normally asks you to commit to one mode; resolving both costs five total mana across two colors and lets you stage a swing and a stop after blocks are declared, when neither effect can be played around. The pricing is deliberately honest: each half is worth casting solo, so the fused line is a tempo premium for doing both at once rather than a discount for owning the card. The -6/-0 half is the cleaner of the two, since stripping power without touching toughness sidesteps indestructible and regeneration entirely and simply makes a creature stop hitting. What this pair shows is that the appeal of fusing was never raw efficiency: it was the timing, the ability to compress two separate combat decisions into one uninterruptible window.