Whirling Dervish

Built as the dedicated answer to the black creature decks that defined early Magic: Hypnotic Specter, Sengir Vampire, the Order of the Ebon Hand. The protection clause is the headline, but the growth trigger is where the design gets interesting. A 1/1 green body does not naturally pressure a board, so pairing unblockability-against-black with a counter for connecting turned a hate card into a clock. Against a mono-black opponent the body cannot be targeted, blocked, or even pointed at by a black removal spell (Drain Life included, since protection turns aside both the targeting and the damage), so every connecting swing made it bigger and the longer the matchup stretched, the worse it got. That feedback loop, hoser plus self-sharpening threat, is a design pattern Wizards has revisited often since (Paladin en-Vec, Mirran Crusader, the recurring protection-from-black two-drops in supplemental products), but this was an early articulation of it. The double-green cost is the price for that upside: it locks the card to a green-heavy mana base rather than splashing it as cheap interaction, which is a real cost in an era of awkward dual lands. A piece of pure color-pie hostility from the days when sideboard cards lived in the main deck because sideboards barely existed.