Cephalid Illusionist

The wrinkle is that the trigger does not distinguish friend from foe or beneficial from harmful, so the engine cares only that something points at the Octopus, which is exactly why a free, repeatable, targeted ability turns it from a slow chip-mill into a one-card combustion chamber. That is a hazard most early-2000s design did not anticipate: a creature whose intended cost (mana, tap, a real ability) is bypassed entirely by an external targeting source the designers never priced in. The illusionist's stat line is almost incidental; its place in the game is as the first half of a self-mill loop that has been rebuilt across formats for two decades.