Hornet Cobra

First strike on a green creature was, in 1994, treated as a genuine color-pie transgression worth taxing for. Legends priced its green bodies against a vanilla curve where double-pip costs were a real drawback and first strike was a premium combat keyword largely reserved for white. This snake sits at the intersection of two design assumptions the game has since walked away from. Green was not supposed to get evasive or combat keywords cheaply, so the cost absorbs a tax for the keyword; the double green absorbs another tax for being a creature at all in a set obsessed with legendary permanents and multicolor experiments. The first strike does give the body real teeth on defense, since two damage lands before the regular combat damage step and cleanly trades up against the small two-toughness attackers of the era. But a single point of toughness means it dies to almost any retaliatory ping or trick, and green already polices that range with reach blockers and fight effects at a fraction of the rate. What makes the design historically interesting is not the stat line but what it reveals about the era's color-pie negotiations: first strike on a green snake was apparently worth a full mana and a color restriction, a price the game stopped charging within a few years as creatures across every color got cheaper and keywords got cheaper with them.