Does protection stop board wipes like Wrath of God?

No. Protection only prevents damage, enchanting/equipping, blocking, and targeting. Wrath of God says "destroy all creatures" — it doesn't target anything, so it goes right through protection. A creature with protection from white is destroyed by Wrath of God just like any other creature. Protection's four effects (DEBT) are an exhaustive list, not a general immunity.

Can I target my own creature with protection from red using my own red spell?

No. Protection doesn't care about who controls the source — it only cares about the quality of the source. If your creature has protection from red, it can't be targeted by any red spell or ability from a red source, including your own.

What happens if an Aura is already attached to a creature that gains protection from the Aura's color?

The Aura is put into its owner's graveyard as a state-based action. Protection prevents Auras of the relevant quality from being attached — and if one ends up attached anyway (say, through a rules edge case or a blink), the game removes it automatically. Note: Equipment falls off but stays on the battlefield, while Auras go to the graveyard.

What does 'protection from everything' mean?

Protection from everything means the permanent or player has protection from all objects regardless of their characteristics. It can't be targeted by any spell or ability, enchanted by any Aura, equipped by any Equipment, fortified by any Fortification, blocked by any creature, and all damage dealt to it is prevented. Teferi's Protection grants this to the player until their next turn — making them immune to virtually all interaction during that window.

How does protection from a player work in Commander?

Protection from a specific player covers every object that player controls and every object they own but don't control. In a two-player game it's effectively hexproof plus unblockability. In Commander with four players, it only applies to one opponent's permanents — others can still interact freely. True-Name Nemesis is the most famous example of this variant.

Is protection the same as hexproof?

No — they overlap but aren't the same. Hexproof only prevents targeting by opponents. Protection prevents targeting (from any player), damage, being enchanted or equipped, and being blocked, all specifically by sources with the stated quality. Protection is narrower in scope (it applies to one quality, not all opponents), but does significantly more when that quality matches your opponent's deck.

Protection in MTG: Complete Mechanic Guide

Protection is one of Magic's oldest and most misunderstood keyword abilities. It's been on the books since Alpha - the very first set - and it's caused more table arguments than almost any other mechanic I can think of. The short version: protection doesn't make a creature untouchable. It does something more specific, and once you understand exactly what, it becomes one of the most powerful tools in the game.

What is Protection?

Protection is a static keyword ability, written as "protection from [quality]." That quality is usually a color - "protection from black" is the classic example - but it can be almost anything: a card type, a subtype, a supertype, even a specific player.

The ability is primary in white, though it shows up in other colors when the flavor fits - green getting protection from artifacts, for instance, or a card aligned against its enemy colors.

What protection actually does is best remembered through the acronym DEBT. A permanent or player with protection from [quality] cannot be:

Damaged by sources with that quality (all such damage is prevented)
Enchanted, equipped, or fortified by permanents with that quality
Blocked by creatures with that quality
Targeted by spells or abilities from sources with that quality

The reminder text printed in Core Set 2020 captures this cleanly: "This [object] can't be blocked, targeted, dealt damage, enchanted, or equipped by anything [quality]."

What protection is NOT: a blanket immunity. Protection doesn't stop global effects that don't target. A sweeper like Wrath of God destroys all creatures - it doesn't target any of them, so a creature with protection from white goes right into the graveyard along with everything else. This trips up players constantly, and it's worth burning that distinction into memory early.

Rules

Protection is covered by CR 702.16 in the Comprehensive Rules. Here's what you need to know, section by section.

Core rules

Targeting (CR 702.16b): A permanent or player with protection can't be targeted by spells or abilities from a source with the stated quality. Note that it's the source that matters - not the effect. A red removal spell targeting a creature with protection from red fizzles because the spell itself is red.

Auras (CR 702.16c): An Aura with the stated quality can't enchant the protected permanent. If an Aura of the relevant quality somehow ends up attached (through a blink effect or a rules corner case), it's put into its owner's graveyard as a state-based action.

Equipment and Fortifications (CR 702.16d): Equipment or Fortifications with the stated quality can't be attached to a protected permanent. If they're already attached and protection is gained, they fall off as a state-based action - but unlike Auras, they stay on the battlefield.

Damage prevention (CR 702.16e): Any damage from a source with the stated quality is prevented entirely. This applies to combat damage and spell damage alike.

Blocking (CR 702.16f): An attacking creature with protection can't be blocked by creatures with the stated quality.

Variants

Protection has a few special forms worth knowing:

Protection from everything (CR 702.16j): Exactly what it sounds like - the permanent or player has protection from each object regardless of its characteristics. It can't be targeted, enchanted, equipped, fortified, blocked, or dealt damage by anything, period.

Protection from a player (CR 702.16k): This covers all objects that player controls and all objects they own but don't control. It's not about card characteristics at all - it's about ownership and control. This is the variant used by **True-Name Nemesis**, which we'll come to shortly.

Multiple qualities (CR 702.16g-i): "Protection from [quality A] and from [quality B]" is just two separate protection abilities stapled together. "Protection from each [characteristic]" expands to cover every possible value of that characteristic - so "protection from each color" means protection from white, blue, black, red, and green as five distinct abilities.

Redundancy (CR 702.16m): Multiple instances of protection from the same quality on the same permanent are redundant. Having two copies of "protection from black" doesn't stack or interact differently - it just means the same thing twice.

Common misunderstandings

Rules note: The four things protection prevents are an exhaustive list, not a floor. Effects that don't fall into DEBT - like "destroy all creatures," "each player loses 3 life," or counters placed without targeting - go right through protection. If your opponent casts Ghostly Prison and you attack with a protected creature, your opponent still has to pay the {2} unless the creature has protection from white specifically (because Prison's ability is a white source). Protection is precise, not absolute.

Another common one: a creature with protection from red can still be sacrificed, can still be the target of your own red spells (protection only prevents targeting by sources with the quality - and your own spells, if you're asking, are still sources of that quality, so actually no - your red spell still can't target it). Protection applies regardless of who controls the source.

Strategy

Playing with protection

Protection does two powerful things at once: it makes a creature nearly unblockable into the relevant color and shields it from targeted removal of that type. A White Knight (protection from black) swinging into a black deck is often a completely free attack - it can't be blocked by black creatures, and the most common removal spells of that color bounce off it.

In practice, protection rewards you most when you can predict what your opponent is playing. Protection from red laughs at burn-heavy decks. Protection from artifacts tears through artifact-creature strategies. The more color-homogenous your opponent's deck, the more free value you extract from a well-matched protection ability.

When deckbuilding, I think of protection as a way to build a guaranteed threat in a specific matchup. It's less universally useful than hexproof (which stops all targeting) but often more powerful in context - because the blocking prevention applies broadly against entire colors.

Playing against protection

The key insight is that protection has gaps. Global effects - board wipes, effects that say "each creature gets -X/-X," mass sacrifice effects, phasing - all bypass protection completely. If your removal suite is monochromatic and your opponent has protection from that color, you need to look for:

Non-targeted damage or destruction (sweepers, "each creature" effects)
Sacrifice effects
-1/-1 counters or other stat reductions that don't use damage
Color-changing effects (turning the creature's protection irrelevant by changing the color of your sources - this is niche, but it exists)

Format check: Protection's power level varies enormously by format. In a Legacy aggro mirror with protection-from-red creatures swinging into burn spells, the ability can be format-warping. In a Commander game where five players are running five different color combinations, protection from one color is narrower - valuable, but rarely game-ending on its own.

Deckbuilding considerations

Protection pairs naturally with aggressive strategies. A cheap creature that's hard to block and can't be targeted by the most common removal in a format is exactly what beatdown decks want. In white-based aggressive decks historically, protection from black was a go-to tool precisely because black removal (targeted destruction, -X/-X, discard effects on creatures) was pervasive.

In Commander, Teferi's Protection deserves special mention. Granting yourself protection from everything until your next turn and phasing out all your permanents is a complete reset button for a full-board wipe or a lethal combat step aimed your way. It's arguably one of the best defensive Instants ever printed for the format.

Notable cards

Teferi's Protection ('{2}{W}') is the premier protection card in Commander. It phases out all your permanents and gives you protection from everything until your next turn - your life total can't even change. You essentially skip a turn's worth of pain and come back as if nothing happened. It's one of those cards where, once you've had it save you, you find room for it in every white deck.

Tower of the Magistrate is a land that pays no mana to tap for '{C}', and for '{1}' and a tap, gives any creature protection from artifacts until end of turn. In a format where artifact creatures and artifact-based removal are common, this is a quietly powerful utility land. It was specifically designed to counter Masticore, which tells you something about the era.

True-Name Nemesis (from Commander 2013) gave protection from a player - meaning, in a two-player game, protection from your opponent. Hexproof from them, unblockable by their creatures, immune to all their damage. It was a 3/1 for '{1}{U}{U}' that was genuinely almost uninteractable in Legacy for years, and it remains one of the most discussed examples of how a protection variant can become oppressive in the right context.

For the condensed variant, Skrelv, Defector Mite and Sungold Sentinel are worth mentioning. Both offer an activated ability granting hexproof from a color and preventing blocking by creatures of that color - roughly half of the full protection package, deliberately minus the damage prevention, to avoid the edge cases that come with that clause.

History

Protection has been part of Magic since the very beginning - Alpha (1993) introduced it, and it was immediately recognized as complicated. Interestingly, the effort to define what protection does was instrumental in the creation of targeting as a fundamental game concept. Before protection forced the question, "targeted" versus "non-targeted" effects weren't clearly articulated.

The original Alpha rulebook described protection informally, with examples rather than a precise rules definition. That looseness is part of why the mechanic generated so many disputes at early tables.

Protection was removed from core sets in Sixth Edition (1999) due to complexity concerns for new players, then returned in Ninth Edition (2005). It stayed evergreen - present in every set - for years, but with the release of Magic Origins (2015), it was demoted to deciduous: available for use, but not guaranteed to appear in every set. In the three blocks immediately following that decision, it showed up exactly once, on Emrakul, the Promised End.

It returned more actively in Modern Horizons (2019) and Core Set 2020, initially on a probationary basis as an evergreen keyword. That probationary period lasted roughly until Core Set 2021. By the time **Magic: The Gathering Foundations** was released, protection had been moved back to deciduous status - present when the design calls for it, but no longer a guaranteed fixture in every set.

Protection from a player specifically arrived with Seht's Tiger in Future Sight (2007) for players, and True-Name Nemesis in 2013 for permanents. Eon Frolicker is the only other card to have offered protection from a player since.