Repel Intruders

Most hybrid cards treat the dual symbol as a discount: either color unlocks the whole effect, so the pip lowers the barrier to splashing. This one inverts that logic. The cost still requires one of the two colors to cast (the symbol cannot be paid with generic mana at all), but the spell reads which colors you actually spent and pays out accordingly: white mana buys the two Soldier tokens, blue mana arms the creature counter, and only a manabase producing both gets both halves. The colors are additive here, not interchangeable, which is the design twist worth noting in a lineage that usually makes the two sides equivalent. The cost is a menu the spell consults after you have paid it. That structure also explains the awkward window the card lives in. The counter clause stops only creature spells, so the blue half rewards holding the card open against a threat that may never arrive, while the white half wants to be cast on your own terms for board presence. Paying for both means committing both colors at instant speed and then hoping the reactive half finds a target, or accepting a four-mana instant for two 1/1 bodies. It is built entirely around one conditional, more compelling as an exercise in a spell parsing its own payment than as a tool anyone returned to.