Decks like Dragapult ex/Iron Thorns ex play this card to set up their entire gameplan on their first turn, making it a necessity in many of the current format's evolution-centric decks
There are other ways to draw a lot of cards with white, but I'm partial to the enchantress strategy, which in my opinion is some of the best card draw in the game, let alone for mono-white decks
But all jokes aside, Nettle Guard is much more than just a decent attacker if you play it in the early turns, and it retains its utility later in the game thanks to its sacrifice ability
You can choose to tap a target creature or prevent a tapped creature from untapping during the opponents next untap step
Setting aside the utterly random bit of artifact-hosing (which I guess is a reference to Mirrodin Pure defeating the colored Phyrexians), theres an interesting riff on cards like Platinum Angel, Lichs Mirror, Angel of Grace, and Exquisite Archangel