See Challenge # 128.

I was thinking about various ways spirits imbuing animals could be represented, and one was variants on totem armor. I wanted to capture the flavour of "a slight improvement" without embracing card disadvantage.

I liked totem armor a lot, but decided to do something slightly different. I considered having it draw a card when it died, but protecting the creature from all spells (including bounce and exile) but not straight-up creature combat seemed to fit the flavour better.

I envisaged this in all colours, even though most colours don't usually get to counter things, like totem armor. I'm not sure if it's worth a mechanic though.

Hmm. This is very similar to Totem Armor, but it feels more like a color break if it appears in, say, red.

I do like the idea of the Spirits being represented by enchantments.

Spirits as enchantments: thumbs up.

Countering things in red or black: hmm... argh... no, I don't think we should go there.

Thanks for the support on spirits. I think I should change the name to "imbued by..." or "enhanced by..." or something so it doesn't sound like this card should be a creature, but it's good to know it doesn't seem odd the spirits aren't creatures.

With the colour... hm. I note blue never gets regenerate in modern, and white essentially never does, but both got Umbras which don't technically say "regenerate" but have the same effect. And umbras felt fine to me -- very much in the spirit of using the tech to represent "a tougher creature" but not just being "regenerate anything". So I tried to follow that precedent. But countering does feel more out-of-place. I wonder if there's something that would serve the same effect but look more natural? Or, like umbras, it could only happen in some colours (definitely ok in W or U, I think, modulo shenanigans about enchanting opponents creatures, and maybe G)

Green has some precedent - Avoid Fate, Ranger's Guile, that kind of thing.

I can't think of anything that'll accomplish the same kind of effect but look okay in red or black. It would be great if we could find one though.

Black and Red aren't very protective in the first place. Perhaps B and R spirit enchantments can have 'Vindictive Spirit' instead? Something akin to Retromancer, or perhaps Karmic Justice?

I still think you can have an ablative aura in different colours, but now I think maybe it would be fine to just have this in some colours and not others.

"Some colours and not others" would work fine in some ways. Magic has coped fine with the traditional quadchotomy of fire and earth in red and water and air in blue. Problem is that a "fire spirit" really really wants to be red, but getting anything totem-armour-style in red does feel like a bit of a stretch.

On the other hand. In my Code Geass set I have mecha with eject, which actually works rather like totem armour. That's not very different. They're equipment, and it feels a bit more natural for equipment to be protective, but... yeah, maybe the Orbisan spirits can be in red and still be somewhat protective.