Brimstone Dragon
Eight mana for a 6/6 flier with haste is the kind of math the Portal sets ran on: simplified cost-to-stats ratios for an audience that did not yet know the curve, sold on the fantasy of a dragon that swings the turn it lands rather than on efficiency. Stripped to flying and haste, the card is a pure top-end finisher, the payoff at the end of a ramp ladder where the only sequencing question is whether you have the lands to cast it. The body is honest about what it is for: nothing wasted on protective abilities or value triggers, just one evasive keyword (flying) to get it through, paired with haste so the threat lands and connects in the same turn rather than telegraphing itself a turn early. That combination is the design language at work: flying does the evading, haste collapses the window an opponent would otherwise have to answer it, and together they convert the creature into damage immediately. A Dragon should fly, hit hard, and not wait, and so it does exactly that and nothing more. Compared to the constructed-grade dragons the game would later produce, this is a museum piece in the way the whole Portal line is, a reminder that the early starter products were teaching the shape of a finisher before they ever worried about the price.


