Canyon Drake

A pump effect that bills the hand twice: a mana for each activation, plus a card off the top of your hand at random, and that randomness is the part worth studying. Where most combat tricks of its era spent mana or life, this one asks you to shed cards, and because the discard is at random you cannot surgically pitch a dead one or bury a key card; you take what the shuffle hands you. That friction made it a natural fit for graveyard-and-discard strategies, where filling the yard is the point and a flying clock is a useful byproduct rather than a cost. The ability runs at instant speed, so a flush hand can turn a 1/2 flier into a sizable attacker mid-combat or hold up the threat as a blocking bluff. Each activation buys two points of power for a mana and a card, which is a respectable rate while the hand is deep and a brutal one once it thins. And it has a floor the design quietly enforces: discarding is a cost, so an empty hand shuts the engine off entirely. The card wants you flush, not empty, the inverse of the hellbent payoffs that red-black graveyard decks would later chase. A small, sharply themed piece of its set's red-black subtheme, more remembered for the idea than the body it was bolted onto.