Faerie Conclave

The manland template, fully formed on its first try. The Urza's Legacy cycle (Faerie Conclave alongside Treetop Village, Spawning Pool, Forbidding Watchtower, and Ghitu Encampment) solved a problem that had nagged at control decks since the beginning: a land that does nothing but tap for mana is dead weight against discard, and a creature is dead weight against sweepers, so why not collapse the two into one card and let the same slot answer both threats? The entire balancing act lives in three places. The land enters tapped, which is the tempo tax that keeps a manland from being a strict upgrade over a basic. The body is small and easy to kill the turn it animates, so it pressures life totals without warping the board. And because it is only a creature when you pay to make it one, it sidesteps the sorcery-speed sweeper entirely: hold it as a land through the Wrath, animate it on the empty board afterward. That last property is the whole pitch for control. Where a real creature commits to the table, this commits to nothing until you decide the window is safe, then chips away two flying damage at a clip while presenting a removal target only on the turns you choose. Every animated land since has been priced against this cycle's terms.