White Ward

A self-correcting puzzle dressed up as a one-mana Aura: protection from white, granted by a white Aura, with the rider that the Aura itself stays attached. That last clause is the whole design. Protection from white would, by the standard rules, instantly strip off any white Aura on a white-protected creature; the parenthetical override is the patch that lets the card function at all. The cycle (Black Ward, Blue Ward, Red Ward, Green Ward) shows Magic already legislating around its own keyword interactions, and the templating has aged into a small monument to how raw the earliest rules were. The strategic use is narrow but pure: a one-mana shield against mirror-match removal, mirror-match combat, and mirror-match blockers, all at a time when white-on-white was the most predictable matchup in the game. Circle of Protection: White covered the damage axis; this Aura covered everything else, targeting or blocking-related, asking only a single white mana in return. Later protection-granting Auras would refine the rate and the trigger, but the cheap-white-permanent-that-walls-off-the-mirror template traces its roots here, complete with the self-referential exemption that keeps the whole thing legal.