Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1209: Protection

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

In this podcast, I talk about the history of the protection mechanic, starting from Limited Edition (Alpha) to present day.

I'm pulling away from the curb because I dropped my son off at school. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is all about the history of protection. So protection is an ability that goes all the way back to alpha and it has a very interesting history. So I'm going to talk all about protection today and some of the mechanics that sort of came from protection sort of later

evolutions of protection Okay, so let's go back to the very beginning because protection shows up in alpha. I believe it shows up on seven cards There are five cards known as wards that are auras they give that all in white and cycle is a cycle in white they get protection each of the five colors and There is white Knight and Black Knight. They're two creatures that are first strike that have protection from the opposite colors. So White Knight, protection from black. Black Knight, protection from white.

So the interesting thing about protection, so early magic was a little more hand wavy on rules than the game would eventually become. And the reason for that was when Richard made the game he didn't expect it to be something that people were gonna play in tournaments you know like it was more like hey you're playing in your own home and so Richard really saw it as the plus that like hey there's a feel these things have and you can figure out how they work you know the rule book would would loosely explain things but it it just gave you the general sense

and the idea of protection I think protection came from the idea of Like in in a lot of other games like Dungeon Dragons and stuff. There's protective magic, right? You have magic that sometimes magic is used aggressively And sometimes it's used defensively. And there's a lot of offensive magic, but Richard wanted some defensive magic. And so the idea of protection was pretty clear is, okay, well, I'm immune to this thing. This thing, you know, I can't be harmed by such and such. And the easiest thing, where protection started

and where it lasted for quite a while, I don't know the exact stat, but my guess is 90 plus percent of all protection is from a color. So the idea of protection early on was I'm immune to something. And originally it was like, I'm immune to this type of magic. Well, I'm a white knight, so I'm immune to black magic.

What did that mean? What did immune to black magic mean? So early on, it was sort of like, well, you can't be affected by spells of that color. Oh, okay. But what exactly does that mean? And they left it kind of vague. And so they initially think about protection and early magic. Before, like at some point,

the sixth edition rules came around and started really defining things. The sixth edition rules, for those who don't know their magic history, magic came out, they had loosey goosey rules. And at some point we're like, you know what? We really need to clean up these rules. We need very tight rules.

And sixth edition was the first sort of real tightening of the rules. And there were a lot of things that up until that point, there was a lot of, I mean, as you look at things, like it was not until sixth edition that like, creatures say creature on them and enchantments, or say enchantment on them That you know, they used to be summoned, you know creature type So like summon goblin like how do I know when I destroy type of creatures that that goblin is a creature?

It doesn't even say on it that it's a creature So anyways, there's a lot of cleanup, but one of them so the idea of protection Early on was like it can't be affected, spells of that color can't affect it. Okay, what does that mean? So for example, one of the big questions early on had to do with Wrath of God. Wrath of God is a white spell, Black Knight is protection from white. Okay, well Black Knight can't be affected by white spells, well then Wrath of God can't

destroy it. And there was a point in time that was true, that Wr wrath of God can't destroy it. And there was a point in time that was true, that wrath of God could not destroy it. But, there are a lot of things that, for example, I remember the card that was one of the, there's a card in alpha called balance. So balance says, I equal the number of creatures and lands and Cards in hand I believe so like I look at how many lands I have and then my opponent has to Or I say whoever has less lands goes down to like you equal to the lesser number So if I have three lands and you have five lands when you have to go down to three let you the sacrifice land

Until you're the same as me and So the idea was, okay, what does that mean? Okay, so I have a black knight. So now I'm going to use balance. Okay, well balance can't kill the black knight, but what does that mean? What if I have no creatures and all you have is a black knight? Well, I guess it can't destroy it so it stays Okay. Well, what if I have one creature and you have black knight and another creature?

Are you forced to sacrifice the other creature because it can't kill the black knight? like does the black knight count as one of the things that you You know, are you when you have to choose must you force to save it or do you not have to choose to save it because it can't be killed by balance and in fact the whole idea of protection is the thing that made Richard had to come up with the idea of targeting right so in early magic the word target goes back to early magic I don't think it's used as aggressively in templating as it later was, but something like terror, did say destroy target creature or non-black creature.

But the idea of targeting is, oh, well, a spells who affect something has to choose it. And so they came up with the idea of targeting and part of targeting was, oh, well, things protection can't be targeted. If you can't be affected by it, you can't be targeted if you can't be affected by you can't be targeted And so there's this thing that happened in her Early magic where they came out of this thing they called semi targeting So there actually was a ruling for a while that let's say I play balance and my opponent has a black knight

Or my opponent plays balance and I'm likely whatever Balance get does count the black night as far as the number of creatures that are there, but it can't destroy black night. So let's say for example that I have a black night and my opponent plays, if I have less creatures than them, they do count the Black Knight for the number of less creatures than them. But if I have more creatures than them, I don't have to count the Black Knight, meaning the Black Knight can't be destroyed.

So let's say for example, I have two creatures, one of which is a Black Knight and they have one creature and they cast Balance. Well, I have to pick one creature for the Balance. I'll pick my not Black Knight and then black knight should be destroyed normally. Oh, but it's not because it's got protection or if I have a, so the idea of semi-protection was that it was aware of it, but it couldn't destroy it. So anyway, there was a lot of rigmarole and a lot of weird like, like balance, a lot of weird things. So when they got to sixth edition they said okay we need to clarify what executive protection mean.

So they decided the protection meant four things. It's actually not one ability it's four abilities all tied together. Okay so the the mnemonic they used was DEBT. So first it can't be damaged. So that means is any damage done to a creature by that color, the damage is reduced to zero. So if I have a creature protection from red and you lightning bolt it, okay, well, it just reduces all the damage. None of the damage gets done to red. Now also, we'll get to targeted insects.

So, lightning bolts is a bad example. Let's say I do pyroclasm that does two damage to all creatures, that damage is reduced to nothing. Next, it cannot be enchanted, equipped, or fortified. So the idea is nothing can be attached to it that is of that color. So if you have protection from white, I can't put an aura on you that is you have protection from white, I can't put an

aura on you that is white. Or aura on, I can't put any aura on myself or you. It's got protection from that. So, um, uh, and once again, the other thing to remember is, um, early magic was very, the effect was global. Effects were very global in early magic. So if my effect makes goblins better, it makes all goblins better, it's by any player. So protection just said, hey, I can't be affected by anything of this color. So that included your stuff. The B in debt is blocked. I can't be blocked by creatures of that color. And the T is targeted. I can't be targeted. So I'm not allowed to, so if you have protection, I can't point a spell at you. I can't damage you. I can't enchant you, equip you,

I can't attach you in any way. And I can't be blocked by you. So it's sort of funny that white and black knights sort of were like these enemies of each other, but they really couldn't ever come in combat with each other, they never fought each other. Because the black knight couldn't be blocked by a white knight, and then the white knight

couldn't be blocked by a black knight knight and then the white knight couldn't be blacked by a black knight. So the interesting thing there, so this is where people sometimes get confused by protection. Now let's go back to Wrath of God. Okay, Wrath of God does not target. It just says destroy all creatures. So it's not a targeted effect. So it's not the T right it's not it's not damage the wrath of God destroys it's not damage like pyroclasm or if I

had a spell that did lots of damage to creatures well damage for protect that so if I do you know pyroclasm or a larger sort of effect that I'm doing a lot of damage with red will will protection protect from that? So the wrath of God is not doesn't attach anyway, it's not enhanced or equipped or enchanted or equipped or anything. It has nothing to do with blocking, right? So the thing is, once we defined it, well wrath of God can kill. Protection doesn't save you from everything because the idea of things not being able

to affect you that don't directly do something to you was problematic and that's why the rules sort of arranged that. So the idea is like, okay, um, I have a suite of things and that covers most things. It's not like I said, the wrath of God is a good example where, Hey, I, I can in fact, with a white spell, kill your black knight. There's not a lot of spells that do it. I can't pinpoint kill it. I can't pacifism it, but there is a way to get rid of it. And so the other thing that protection does not do

is protection doesn't save you from sort of the game killing you. So the most common of that is reducing the toughness down to zero. So if you have a, let's say you have a white knight and I did some global effects that reduce your your power and toughness. I can't target it right so I can't put an ore on it or but let's say I did something to put minus one minus one counters on everything or just did minus x, minus x to all creatures.

That would destroy a protection creature because if you have zero toughness, the game, it's not the spell killing you technically, it's the game killing you and the game doesn't care about protection. So there is stuff like that. So you can, you can destroy something. The reducing damage is not the same as reducing reduction of toughness. So that doesn't stop that. So anyway, the interesting thing was protection.

The reason protection existed in the first place was it was flavorful, right? It was a cool flavorful word. And the other thing that Richard did and protection is a good example is he said, hey, I'm going to make a mechanic, but it's something that's adjustable like trample is just trample, but protection was protection from quality. At the time in alpha, the quality was always color, but it wasn't defined as colors. We'll see. He just, it just was defined as inequality. But in Alpha there

was protection from each of the five colors, so the wards had protection. But it's interesting, Alpha has seven cards with protection, six are white, one is black. And in fact, it's not till Legends, which is the third expansion, that there's a non-white or black card with protection. White has always kind of been king of protection. It's king. White's the most defensive color. So white was the best at protection. Like I said, it had the wards.

Oh, another funny story was when the white ward in Alpha says, and change creatures protection from white. That's all it says. But it turns out that one of the things that protection ended up doing is it keeps you from being targeted by white things. So if you put white word on something, it gained protection from white,

but then it knocked off anything. So when I say it can't be equipped, enchanted, or fortified, I don't just mean you can't be targeted, because obviously targeted covers that. Let's say I give you protection, I grant you protection from white and you have a white enchantment on you, a white enchantment or white equipment

or white fortification, then it falls off. And so the white ward originally, it had to be eroded. It just, you would put it on and then technically the game would knock it off. It would knock itself off. And then eventually said, okay, this protection doesn't get rid of this spell we had to sort of specify that so anyway

It's a white and black thing and then along comes Legends and legends has the first red and green things with protection And then it's not the homeland that we get the first blue card with protection So one of the rules of protection was as follows is in early magic. White was king of protection. White could have protection from any color. And as you will see later, white was protecting from other things too. And then each color was allowed to have protection from either itself, its own color, or its enemies.

The reason it would be its own color, like in legends there was a card that wanted to do damage, but it didn't want to damage you. Either itself its own color or its enemies The reason to be its own color like in legends There was a card that wanted to do damage, but it didn't want to damage itself So it had protection from red so it's kind of protected from from red damage So we had left things sort of like oh why because I'm attuned to my own color I'm not damaged by my own color or hey, I'm an enemy. I'm fighting you so I have special magic to deal with my enemy. So other than a white early on there wasn't the only protection you got was for yourself or for your enemies you didn't you couldn't get protection from your allies. Later we would do that but we did not do that in early magic. The

other interesting thing is basically for most of early magic, protection was only colors. In antiquities, which is the second set, they made a, they instead of using protection for artifacts, they sort of hand wrote things out. You know, I can't be targeted by artifacts and stuff. Uh, it's not actually till Urza's legacy, uh, that we start doing actual protection from artifacts. And I believe that is the first non color protection that we did. Um, in some ways artifacts, because early magic, um, we didn't do colored artifacts, they were colorless.

Um, the idea of protection from colorless, I don't know, because colorless is not a color, it felt weird. So we ended up doing protection from artifacts, which was sort of us trying to capture the idea of protection from colorless. So that was the first protection we did where it was from something other than colors. And in some ways, Artifact was kind of, I mean, it's not a color, Colorless isn't a color, but it was still us playing in that general safe. Although it was the first time we referenced creature types.

It's not until Odyssey that we would do protection from another creature type, which would be creatures on Belo beloved Chaplain. The other thing that happened in invasion, so invasion was before Odyssey, so we had protection artifacts and then the next thing is we did a card in invasion that a protection from Kavu. It was protection from a creature type. And then over the years we've definitely played around there are a lot of different you know, we messed around protection from players like in Future Sight, Setz Tiger, it was a future shifted card. Like, oh, what if players could get protection? And then eventually we did like True Name nemesis we were protection from players and we messed

around protection from everything I mean we've definitely played around a lot of the space of what protection can be but the interesting story of protection to me is it is this weird thing alpha mechanics were very much about flavor. I think that most mechanics in Alpha didn't start necessarily as named mechanics. It started as Richard wanting to capture some essence of something. And one of the things to remember,

the idea of protective magic, the idea that magic could represent something that protected you and saved you, it's pretty cool. And so there's not a lot of mechanics from alpha that are still in the game. I mean, flying is still in the game, trample is still in the game, first strike is still in the game.

And that might be it from the stuff that was in alpha. You know, and even then we don't use first strike a lot. A lot of times we use first strike on attacking these days. We do, we still do tramp. I mean, flying obviously is a all star. So what happened was it's in sixth edition, we defined the rules for protection for the first time. We say, okay, we make the debt rules and like, okay,

this is what protection actually means. And by the way, we actually finally made reminder text for protection So this is a reminder tech protection from quality. This can't be blocked targeted dealt damage enchanted or equipped by inequality And I think later they expanded to like fortified and stuff I'm not sure that I sometimes when we do reminder text We don't hit every possible corner case just because we're not worried about that. But it can't be nothing can attach to it. Okay, so in sixth edition, what happens is we for the first time iron out the rules, we define it, we give the four

definitions like here's what protection does and then we remove it from the core set. We're like this is too complicated. Like I said, it's four different things. And it is easy to forget some of those things. Like I think most people when you say, okay, I can't be affected by things, they get targeting, maybe they get damaged, maybe they even get equipped. The idea that it can't be blocked is something

that is not super intuitive. And it also causes us some problems sometimes because it really one of the things that we try to be careful with in our evasion these days is making sure that particular decks don't have no answer like if you go back and look at early days when we did like fear or intimidate fear could only be blacked by black or artifact creatures so if you just weren't playing black or didn't have artifact creatures just it was unblockable then intimidate was us fixing

fear we were trying to say okay well you can't be blocked by things that share playing black or didn't have artifact creatures, just it was unblockable. Then Intimidate was thus fixing fear, where we were trying to say, okay, well, you can't be blocked by things that share this color or artifacts, but again, if you weren't having a mirror match, it just made it hard to interact with. And eventually it moved to Menace, because Menace is more about how many,

not that particular color. So protection is a little of that. So we don't tend to put protection these days on super large things for that reason. But anyway, so it gets removed from sixth edition Then a couple of course that's later back in ninth edition. We're like, well man, we like the word protection protection such a cool word Let's put protection back in so we then put it back in the core set Then at Magic Origins we said, okay, okay, okay

It's not gonna be evergreen anymore. We're gonna make it deciduous every set doesn't need protection it definitely has come complications and so we started saying okay we will use protection to where we need it it's a tool it's very flavorful I mean the interesting thing about protection is the fact that we still occasionally protection shows like the value of flavor because it is a complicated mechanic that we know time and time again we've tested that just if you say the average player what does protection do they don't haven't learned the debt thing most people can name some of what it does but they can't name all of it um okay then in uh C 2020, Aaron just loves protection.

He loves the name protection. So he said, let's bring this back and let's try and make it evergreen again. So he kind of put it what we call probationary status that it like, and like I said, I would argue that it's deciduous. We just don't do protection everywhere. It is a complicated mechanic. And we have started coming up with other mechanics that kind of fill in the void that do some of what protection does. So let's walk through those. So first was

Shroud. So in Future Sight we introduced on the Future Shifter cards we introduced Death Touch and Life Link and Reach and Shroud. So Shroud first showed up in Legends, named. And the idea of Shroud was no one can target me. So Shroud was kind of like protection, but only the targeted part, but it's all targeted things, not just that color. So it's sort of like eye protection from all colors, but only for the targeting part. And it includes colorless as well I guess. But the idea

is so Shroud was like nobody can target me. And we like that idea like it's a like we part of what I realized after the fact is protection it's just so complicated. I think if we had to do it all over again it's possible that protection might mean can't be targeted. Maybe maybe maybe can't be damaged I don't think we can put all that stuff in there. We definitely wouldn't put blocked in But anyway shroud this is a problem ran into a shroud is magic had moved away from the globalness like early magic All effects were basically global right if I If I made my goblins better, I made all goblins better. If I did something, I did it to everybody. And what we learned eventually is intuitively people believe like my spells are good for

me and bad for my opponent. And if I make goblins better, I don't make my opponent's goblins better. And so we've moved away. I mean, there are the occasional global effects. We still do global effects, but the default is your spells help you your spells hurt your opponent There are times we break that rule that is not a hard and fast rule, but it is the default of how we do things And so the problem with shroud was people assumed well, it's not my opponent stuff now mine Hey, if I want to put an aura on my creature, why can't I? Or if I want to jank with my creature, why can't I?

So people were playing Shroud wrong. So we came up with Hexproof. So Hexproof first appeared in Portal 3 Kingdoms, unnamed. In fact, the first place it appeared with a name I believe was Duel of the Plainswalkers 2012. We then put it in the commander set and put it in Magic 2012 core set. I think it was the first one that had it by name in a core set. And so hexproof is like, okay, I can't be targeted but only by my opponent's stuff.

I can target my stuff, not my opponent. Even hexproof though proved to be just super powerful. The idea is if I ever can combine hexproof with evasion, there's not a lot of answers. So the reason that if I put flying on a creature, you know, the reason you can answer that is maybe you have a flyer, but more so you have, you can destroy creatures and you can get rid of creatures. So if I make a creature that you can't block, well, blocking is the way that you deal with it most of the time. Well, then the only other answer is destroying with the creature, sorry, destroying with the spell. So hexproof said, well, you only other answer is destroying with the creature, sorry, destroying with the spell.

So Hexproof said, well you can't destroy with the spell or an ability and if you can't block it, how do you deal with it? And so Hexproof, we really have pulled back a lot on Hexproof. We do not use just like plain Hexproof very often. When we do, it tends to be on smaller creatures and it's something that you can respond to. It's something that you can, I mean, sorry, we put it on small creatures where you can't react to it, but it's small. So maybe it's a one-one unblockable. It's nibbling away at you, but you have other answers, maybe getting some life, but the fact that you can't destroy it, it's not game ending, or at least if it's game ending, it's not it's not game ending or at least if it's game ending it's slow game ending

um then we said okay we need we like having protective magic um shroud replaced with hex proof hex even hex proof proved problematic at times um now before i get to to work uh in hex proof we did start doing we started doing subsets of hexproof. Oh, I don't have to do from everything. I have hexproof from specific things. And this is where we started mimicking a little bit of protection. Oh, I have hexproof from a color. You can, yeah, you can enchant me, enchant me or equip me or block me or damage me, but you can't target me because I have hexproof from you.

And so we started using hexproof in a lot of the places that we'd want to use protection, but we just wanted simple. We didn't want like we didn't want a lot of the baggage. We did that hexproof has done some of that. Eventually what we decided was what we liked is the idea. I mean, and this is kind of the same lesson we learned with Menace, which is we want people to have answers in their deck. We want, like, I want to make it harder for you, but not impossible for you. Okay, it's not that you can't block me with any of your creatures because you just have

the wrong colors. Menace says, hey, you just gotta block me with an extra creature. So, okay, I gotta think about that, but every deck has the ability to block, or most decks, I guess, not creatureless decks, but most decks running creatures, which is most decks, you have an option, like, you can think about it, and there's things you can do. So the question we had was,

was there a way to have protection that there is still answers to it? It's not that I never can be targeted, is that it's harder to target me. And so we ended up, so we made a, we ended up an unnamed ability for a while we called frost armor. It was on like frost Titan diffusion sliver, which says, okay, it's not that you can't target me. It's that it's harder to target me. Well, how do you make something harder to target?

Well, you make it cost more or you put additional costs. So the original idea of Ward like Frost Titan was it was a it was extra mana and I think it was two. So the idea of Ward is okay we'll have Ward and and we'll make it flexible so we can put a number on it if it's mana but the idea is hey if you want to target me it costs extra mana and what I've shown it which is really nice is it allows things to have more protection in the early game and there's answers in a later game but it comes at a cost okay I can do that but I'm using more of my mana it's a larger maybe I'm using my whole turn to get rid of it

and it has an impact and the ward has proven very cool we like to work so much the other thing we did was we said you know what let's let every color of access to it but so we have some difference in flavor we let green white and blue their default Ward is mana and then black and red their default is life. So the idea was red and black is it's not that it I have to spend extra mana on it but it comes in a resource that I have it comes at life. And once again we've've played around with Ward, much like we played around with protection. Ward is open ended, the cost doesn't have to be mana, like I said, it could be life, it could be other things. And so we definitely played around with a lot of costs there.

So where do we live now, modern day? So protection is, like I said, deciduous. There are times and places we like it. Definitely in more advanced sets, like you see it in Modern Horizons type sets. We will, if a set wants protection, we can use it, but we are very conscious of the weight of protection. Protection is complicated. There's a lot of moving pieces with it. There's a lot of parts to it. And so the idea nowadays is we have protection.

We like the words. It is flavorful. In the right place at the right time, we will use it, but we are careful with it. Oh, the other thing that we started to do with protection, since I'm almost wrapped up here, is we learned that protection actually was most interesting when it was temporary.

Like we gave white spells like shelter where, oh, I can grant protection for the turn. So it's not that I, it's not like, oh, I had this protection, you can never deal with me. It's like, well, you're trying to destroy my creature. Hey, for the turn, I can save it. I'm trying to get this creature through for the turn. I could make an unblockable, assuming you have a single color of blockers. It ended up being really interesting in that temporary protection actually proved to be much more useful. So interestingly, we use protection more. If you actually see it in premier sets, it more often gets used as a Temporary effect than as a permanent effect. We do some on the permanent effects occasionally. It's not none

But anyway, like I said protection is definitely It's funny from a historical standpoint. There are a lot of decisions that got made early that like if we had to do again We probably would do differently but You know things get grandfathered in. I mean, like I said, we keep trying to get rid of protection and it keeps coming back because the word is cool and the flavor is cool. And so we've adapted it and tried to change it around so we can make it work the best that it can.

So it is, like I said, it is one of the original mechanics that's still here. It's fallen back to the status. We don't use it all the time. We use it more temporary than permanent, but it still here. It's falling back to the status. We don't use it all the time we use it more temporary than permanent, but it still exists and The way, you know, the protection is pretty cool is that we made shroud we made extra made ward There's something there that is doing that's a fun part of the game. We do like having protective magic We do like hey, I can I can help you from messing with my stuff to some level and that is cool But anyway guys that my friend that is the history of protection

So I hope you guys enjoyed that today, but I'm at work So we all know that means and these is the end my drive to work. So instead of talking magic It's time for me to make a magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye. Bye