Argothian Pixies

A pure metagame call, printed into the set that gave Magic its first real artifact problem. Antiquities flooded the format with artifact creatures (Su-Chi, Tetravus, the Atog family feeding on Ornithopters and Mishra's Factories), and Wizards answered with a small green body whose entire job was to walk past that texture untouched. The protection is split across two clauses doing distinct work: unblockability handles the offense, and damage prevention handles the defense, which together mean the Pixies treat artifact creatures as if they were not on the board at all. That asymmetry, rather than the modest 2/1 frame, is the design idea. It is also an unusually surgical piece of hoser text for its era: rather than a global hate effect (compare the artifact-destruction sorceries of the same period, which scorched the whole board), the answer is welded onto a beater. Printing a hoser as a creature rather than a removal spell let green answer artifact-creature aggression without borrowing from white's enchantment-hate playbook or red's burn. The Pixies never became a defining card, but the template (a cheap creature whose stats are mediocre and whose evasion-plus-prevention package is precision-tuned against one specific archetype) has been reprinted in spirit many times since.