Crypt Angel
Built to reward the aggressively multicolor decks of its era, this Angel rebuys from the two colors black sits between, not its own. The enters-the-battlefield clause specifically wants a blue or red creature card in your graveyard, which makes it a payoff for Grixis-flavored builds where black is the home base and the splash colors supply the bodies worth recurring: a tempo-positive way to turn a traded-off Wildfire Emissary or a countered threat back into a card in hand. The protection from white is the era's signature defensive grant, dodging white's removal and letting the 3/3 flier attack through ground stalls into white-based defenses, which in a set this committed to color pairs was a pointed choice rather than incidental. The body itself is modest for five mana, so the math only works when the graveyard is already stocked and the returned creature carries the value; this is a card that asks for some dying to have happened before it ever lands. As a design it captures the whole multicolor thesis in one slot: every card pushing you toward more colors, the rewards scaling with how committed you are, and the protection keyword still doing the heavy lifting before it largely receded from the game.


