Stave Off

Choosing the color is the entire decision, folding two jobs into one white mana at instant speed: a combat trick that pushes an attacker past a single blocker, and a saving throw against targeted removal that names the color of whatever spell the opponent just cast. Protection grants "can't be blocked by" and "can't be targeted by" in the same breath, so the card that walks a creature past a wall of green chumps also blanks a red burn spell or a black destroy-target-creature effect once it commits. That dual nature is what makes the color-choice framing work: hold up one mana and decide which color is the threat only after the opponent acts, reading the board with full information rather than committing blind. The catch is the narrowness of what protection actually reaches. It stops targeting, damage, blocking, and enchanting or equipping, and nothing else, so a non-targeting sweeper slides past the named color entirely, and so does an edict, which forces the controller to sacrifice without ever pointing at the protected creature. Protection from black does nothing against that line. It also goes quiet the instant it resolves, and the blocking-evasion use demands casting it before blockers are declared, so the removal-dodge use can wait for the spell while the combat trick cannot. This sits at the cheaper, more demanding end of the protection-trick lineage that runs through cards like Apostle's Blessing: a one-mana tempo swing or removal-dodge whose only cost is naming the relevant color correctly, with full board information to do it.