I've been enjoying the Premodern format more and more these days, swimming through the nostalgia and jamming cards I remembered playing as a child when I first learned the game. One of the sideboard cards I came across while researching decks is Gloom, a Black Enchantment designed to hose White-based decks.

The card has since been errata'd to increase the activation costs of all White Enchantments. Back in the early days of Magic, however, Gloom was a unique card in that it directly impacted a particular subset of other cards: Circles of Protection. This begs the question, why did Richard Garfield feel compelled to design a card that specifically combatted Circles of Protection?

What is a Circle of Protection?

To answer why, we first need to define what these cards are. In original Alpha, Garfield created a cycle of five White Enchantments called the Circles of Protection, one for each color (note: due to a printing error, only four Circles of Protection saw print in Alpha. Circle of Protection: Black did not see print until Beta).

All five cards share the same templating: they cost to cast, require one generic mana to activate, and prevent all damage from a single source of a respective color upon activation. Note that this ability can be used multiple times in a turn, so if an opponent attacked you with three Red Creatures, you could pay three mana to activate Circle of Protection: Red three times and prevent damage from each of those attackers.

Don't overlook the potency of these cards, especially placed in the context of early days of Magic. Circle of Protections were powerful color hosers for White decks - out of the sideboard, bringing in a CoP: Red against a mono-Red deck meant you could draw a single card that prevented damage from your opponent's entire deck.

This sideboard strategy was in fact implemented by multiple World Championship players in the 1990s, including Michael Loconto (1996), Bertrand Lestree (1996), Eric Tam (1996), Shawn Regnier (1996), Janosch Kuhn (1997), and Julien Nuijten (2004). There are gold-bordered World Championship printings of these cards to prove it.

Since the release of Beta, Wizards of the Coast has printed three more Circle of Protection variants. In chronological order they are Circle of Protection: Artifacts, Circle of Protection: Shadow, and Circle of Protection: Art.

As indicated by the card name, these provide a similar damage prevention effect from Artifacts, Creatures with Shadow, and cards illustrated by a named artist, respectively. As of May 2026, these are the only eight Circles of Protection to be printed.

Other Ways to Get this Effect

While only eight Magic: The Gathering cards are explicitly named Circle of Protection and follow this templating, there are other ways of obtaining this color-based Protection effect. Two examples are Story Circle and Prismatic Circle.

Both these cards provide greater flexibility, allowing you to name the color you want Protection from when they enter play. These were designed to improve versatility of this effect - the original five cards were only useful against a particular color, relegating them to the sideboard by default. In theory, Story Circle and Prismatic Circle could be played against any deck.

Additional examples of comparable Protection cards with a twist include Circle of Despair, Rhystic Circle, Circle of Solace, and Circle of Affliction. Each of these prevent your life total from declining upon activation, as long as they are addressing the source of damage your opponent is throwing your way.

A spinoff of Circles of Protection are two White Enchantments meant to stop Black and Red decks in their tracks. Those two cards are Absolute Grace and Absolute Law, both printed in Urza's Saga.

Like the Circles of Protection, these two cards are White Enchantments that cost . However, instead of protecting you from Black and Red, these protect your Creatures from those respective colors. In fact, there are numerous cards in Magic's history that grant targeted Creatures Protection from colors - these are particularly potent for their ability to grant all your Creatures Protection. Even before these, Garfield printed a cycle of Wards in Alpha, one for each color, that granted the enchanted Creature with Protection from that particular color.

Other Forms of Protection

While Protection from particular colors is most common, Wizards of the Coast has explored other Protection effects throughout Magic's 33-year history. There are Creatures with Protection from Artifacts, Protection from multicolored, Protection from Creatures, Protection from mono-colored, Protection from your opponents, Protection from Instants, Protection from specific Creature types, Protection from mana value greater than three, and more.

In fact, there's one card in Magic that literally has Protection from everything!

Progenitus, originally printed in Conflux, costs double and is a 10/10 Creature that literally has Protection from everything.

Whatever the Protection is from, the Protection ability differs a little bit from the Circles of Protection. While CoP's specifically prevent damage to you from a particular source (usually a color), a Creature or player having "Protection from XYZ" carries a few implied rules. To explain these rules, someone came up with the D.E.B.T acronym.

• D - Damage: All damage that would be dealt by the specified source is prevented
• E - Enchanted (or Equipped / Fortified): It cannot be enchanted, equipped, or fortified by cards of the specified Protection quality.
• B - Blocked: Creatures with Protection can't be blocked by other Creatures that have the specified quality.
• T - Targeted: One cannot be targeted by spells or abilities of the specified quality.

D.E.B.T. is a helpful pneumonic to help players remember how Protection works.

Frequently Asked Questions

Protection abilities can be very confusing. Here are some of the most common questions asked about these effects.

Q: Does Protection stop a board wipe from killing my Creature?

A: That depends on the board wipe in question. Let's use the D.E.B.T. acronym to unpack this question. If I have an Ureni, the Song Unending in play and my opponent casts a Wrath of God or Damnation, my Ureni will die. Wrath of God and Damnation don't target and don't deal damage. Thus, my Creature will bite the dust despite all its glorious Protection abilities.

If, on the other hand, I have a Narwhal in play and my opponent casts a Pyroclasm, my Narwhal will live to fight on. This is because the board wipe effect in question deals damage, and a Creature with Protection from Red cannot be damaged by Red sources.

The last thing to note is that -X/-X effects are not the same as damage. A Creature with Protection from Black will die to a Toxic Deluge.

Q: What is rule 609.7 in Magic?

A: This rule specifically addresses the concept of "source." When I activate my Circle of Protection: Red, I can prevent damage dealt to me by a Red source. Rule 609.7 addresses exactly what is meant by the term. To paraphrase the rule:

• 609.7a talks about what qualifies what players can choose as a source. This includes permanents, spells on the stack, or face-up objects in the command zone.
• 609.7b discusses effects that prevent or replace damage from sources with certain properties. A CoP: Black activation creates a "shield" against a Black damage source, and when that source deals damage, the source is re-checked to make sure it's still Black. If for some reason the color of the source were to change, the damage isn't prevented and the "shield" isn't used.
• 609.7c talks about prevention or replacement of damage applying to sources that are permanents with the given property and sources that aren't on the battlefield that have that property.

Q: Does Protection from a color stop Deathtouch?

A: Yes. Deathtouch is triggered when a Creature is damaged. If my Creature has Protection from Black and I use it to block your Black Creature with Deathtouch, the damage to my Creature is prevented, so the Deathtouch ability is never triggered. My Creature will survive.

Q: How do you bypass "Protection from Everything?" (I.E., how do you kill Progenitus?)

A: Here is another case where the D.E.B.T. acronym is helpful. While Progenitus can't be killed in combat, through damage, or spot removal, it's still vulnerable to board wipes. For instance, a Wrath of God or Damnation will kill Progenitus. Nevinyrral's Disk will also do the job nicely. Progenitus may not be targetable by anything, but it isn't indestructible.

Wrapping It Up

Despite the clarity of D.E.B.T., there are certain corner cases that continue to stump players to this day. This generates a bit of technical debt, which is one reason why Wizards of the Coast eschews Protection nowadays, instead favoring abilities like Hexproof and Ward. Protection can also be both powerful and difficult to interact with, often making cards with such abilities a bit too dominant in a game. A Creature like Progenitus is extremely difficult to deal with because it can't be damaged, enchanted, blocked, or targeted by anything.

Despite the power and complexity, Wizards of the Coast continues to explore Protection in new and different ways. As the ability has evolved, it's important to look back at the game's roots and appreciate the original Circles of Protection and Wards as groundbreaking effects that paved the way for today's version of these abilities.