Firebrand Ranger

Look at the color of mana in that activation: green, on a body that costs red. The off-color cost is the whole design statement. This is a Gruul ramp engine wearing a red shell, dead weight to a monored caster and quietly useful to anyone already committed to green, since it converts a spare land in hand into an extra drop each turn. It accelerates unlike Llanowar Elves or Rampant Growth: it produces no mana and tutors nothing, it just drops a basic from hand directly onto the battlefield. The land-into-play step is not itself a spell, so it does not eat a counterspell the way a ramp sorcery would, though the activation does use the stack and an opponent can respond to it (a Stifle to counter the ability) and strand the card before it pays off. The price is the rate: a 2/1 that has to survive a turn and be holding a basic before it does anything, and it only ever fetches basics from hand, never a dual or a fetch target. That makes it a slow repeatable engine rather than a burst, built for a grindy two-color deck that wants to flood the board across several turns instead of spiking its curve early. The friction is deliberate: the red body and the green ability pull against each other, demanding you commit to both colors before the card lifts a finger, the multicolor thesis of its era pressed into two mana.