Fire Drake

A firebreathing flier built before the keyword settled into its modern shape. The familiar version of firebreathing, the one Shivan Dragon made canonical, lets you sink unlimited red into the body for a corresponding pump. This one does not: the +1/+0 fires once per turn, a hard cap that turns the ability from a mana sink into a single point of reach. That restriction is the whole story of the card. It means the Drake tops out at 2 power in a given turn no matter how much red you hold open, so the activation is less a finisher button than a way to push the last point of evasive damage or to muscle past a 2/2 flier the base body could not handle. The 1/2 underneath was unremarkable even by the standards of its day, and the throttled pump never gave it a reason to climb above the curve. The card is a snapshot of firebreathing before the design language standardized: an early experiment in pricing the ability by limiting frequency rather than letting mana set the ceiling, the road not taken before the open-ended version became the default.