Bone Shaman

When this giant connects, a black mana makes the damage permanent: whatever it kills in combat stays dead. That rider explains the off-color activation cost on an otherwise mono-red 3/3, and it documents a design era when regeneration was the default defensive trick and combat math had to account for creatures that could simply pop back up. Spending to switch off regeneration was meaningful enough, back then, to hang a creature's whole identity on. The catch is how conditional the payoff is: the anti-regeneration clause only matters once the body actually wins or trades in combat, and it does nothing at all against creatures that have no regeneration to deny, which is the overwhelming majority of them. Layered on top is the manabase tax: a four-mana red giant wants nothing to do with black, yet its one trick demands it. The structural job this card performs (making combat damage stick) survived long after regeneration faded from the templating toolbox; "exile instead of destroy" and "damage can't be prevented" took over the same work in later sets. What dates Bone Shaman is not the effect but the assumption behind it, that the threat of a regenerating blocker was common enough to merit a dedicated answer welded onto a creature's frame, paid for in a color the creature otherwise has no reason to touch.