Tel-Jilad Archers

Protection is usually a narrow keyword: it answers a single color or a single card type, then sits inert whenever that type is absent. The trick of this design is choosing a card type to ignore that happens to be the dominant material of an entire world. Protection from artifacts on a 2/4 with reach means an artifact creature cannot connect, artifact equipment cannot be attached to it, and artifact-based damage rolls off without registering. On a board built mostly of colorless metal, that turns a modest body into a wall almost nothing can climb over, and the reach picks up the artifact fliers that would otherwise sail past a ground blocker. The four toughness is the number doing the real lifting: it sits above the common damage outputs the card expects to brawl with, so it trades up against the threats it can block and survives the ones its protection does not cover. The honest cost of all this specialization is breadth. Strip the artifacts out of the opposing deck and the protection clause does nothing at all, leaving a slow body that blocks politely and contributes little else. It is a specialist sized to dominate exactly one kind of battlefield, the all-artifact war, and to stand around quietly on every other.