Thornscape Master

Both activated abilities ask for a color this Wizard does not produce, and that off-color tax is the whole design idea this multicolor block was built around. As the green leader of the Thornscape cycle, its job is to pull you into red and white: the tap deals 2 damage to a creature, the tap grants protection from a color of your choice, and neither costs a drop of green to fire. The body rewards a manabase that already reaches three colors, and once it does it becomes a repeatable engine: ping a creature down on one turn, save your own attacker or break a blocker with protection on the next. The protection mode is the sneakier half, since granting protection from a color can fizzle a removal spell, slip a creature past a blocker unharmed, or even strip an aura off in the right line. The 2/2 frame is unremarkable on its own, and that is deliberate: the value lives in the tap abilities, and the abilities live in your willingness to splash. The design only makes sense in a block whose entire premise is that more colors is better, staking out repeatable, modal utility as the reward for greedy mana.