Frilled Oculus

The hook here is the mana symbol that does not match the card. A blue creature whose only ability demands green mana to fire is a deliberate signal: this Homunculus was built to live in a two-color shell where Simic mana is assumed, not a curiosity to splash into mono-blue. The 1/3 body is the giveaway. It blocks early, survives the first few turns of combat, and then converts excess mana into a 3/5 attacker once the board stabilizes, all without exhausting itself, since the pump is capped at once per turn rather than a mana sink you can dump into. That cap is the restraint that keeps a two-drop from snowballing: you get one good swing of growth, not an open-ended firebreathing engine. It is a clean expression of the off-color activation pattern that gold-faction sets use to enforce identity, a creature that reads as blue but only functions when you have committed to green as well. The reward for that commitment is modest but honest: a defensive early drop that ages into a threat, priced for the part of a curve where you want bodies that do two jobs across the game rather than one job well.