Crimson Manticore

Pinging an attacker or blocker for one red mana, untapped flier in the sky: this is one of red's earliest passes at the repeatable-ping archetype, a design space that later widened through Prodigal Pyromancer and the pingers-as-removal school. What separates it from those later designs is the targeting restriction. The damage only goes at creatures already committed to combat, which is the constraint that lets the rate sit where it does for a 2/2 flier rather than something more punishing. You cannot snipe mana dorks during their controller's main phase, cannot finish off a planeswalker, cannot aim at the player. The window is combat, and only combat. Because the ability requires tapping and the body has no vigilance, the natural home for it is on defense: a flying blocker that also taxes the ground every time the opponent declares attackers, shooting down a small creature before it ever connects, while staying back to do it again next turn. This reads now as a careful early take on the "flying ping" slot: powerful enough to define a role, restricted enough that the role stayed narrow until later designs loosened the targeting and freed the ability to fire outside of combat.