Deathgaze Cockatrice

Flying paired with deathtouch is one of black's cleaner pieces of combat compression: it folds an evasive clock and a one-sided wall into the same 2/2 body. On offense it chips at life totals through the air; on defense it answers nearly anything, since any creature that blocks or trades with it dies regardless of size. The dual-use design justifies the four mana on such a small frame: the stats are almost beside the point, because the card's job is to make every combat math a losing proposition for the opponent. Because it flies, only fliers and reach creatures can stop it in the air, and those that try feed themselves to deathtouch; on the ground, the opponent simply takes the air damage while nothing they have profitably attacks into a deathtouch blocker. The pairing recurs across eras because the interaction is so efficient that the body barely needs to be big to matter, and the keyword overlap does the work a larger creature or a removal spell would otherwise have to. This is a straightforward, well-built creature that does not headline anything but quietly anchors the black slots of a deck that wants to grind through combat, turning attacks into trades and trades into profit.