Flamewave Invoker

Eight mana to send five damage upstairs is a rate nobody builds toward, and that is precisely the point of the Invoker cycle: a small early body that quietly carries a finisher its controller can fall back on once the game stalls and lands are no longer doing anything. The cycle's whole conceit was the late-game escape valve stapled to a creature you could play on turn three without committing to it, and this is the goblin half of that bargain. The 2/2 is something you cast for tempo or to fill a curve; the activation is the insurance policy you cash only when both players have flooded out. What dates the design is the directness of the target: five to the face (or to a planeswalker, by later templating), with no creature option and no flexibility, which makes it a clock rather than a removal valve like some of its color-shifted siblings. The eight-mana activation is not a balancing detail bolted on; it is the entire reason a 2/2 with a game-ending ability can sit at common, because a deck rarely reaches it before the body has already done its small job and died. The card has more text than its stat line implies, but the relevant line costs more than most games allow you to spend: a creature designed to be played early and remembered late, which is a stranger piece of curve-filler than it first appears.