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Moxonomy

Hulking Goblin

Creature — Goblin1 generic manaRed mana

The drawback is the entire card: a 2/2 attacker that surrendered its ability to play defense and got nothing in return. That trade tells you everything about the design brief behind it. The Portal sets stripped Magic to a beginner-legible subset, and one job of that subset was to demonstrate that a creature's stat line has two sides: it can attack, and it can block, and those are separate things a card can give or take away. Most drawback creatures attach a downside to a juiced-up rate, justifying the restriction with extra power, a bigger body, or evasion. This one prices the forgetting as if it were free, because the lesson mattered more than the bargain. For a new player learning that combat has a back side, a body that does one thing wrong is a clean illustration: it walks into your blockers, it cannot stop theirs, and the rules-text clause that causes that is sitting right there in plain language. There is a quiet honesty in how little it asks for. It does not pretend the inability to block buys anything; it simply is a small red creature that attacks and only attacks, the back half of a stat line carved away and presented as a teaching example rather than a competitive proposition.

Hulking Goblin (vma)
VMA · #174common
Pricing
Normal: $0.09
Foil:
Oracle Text

Rules text

This creature can't block.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
N/A
Modern
N/A
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
Legal
Brawl
N/A
Historic
N/A
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
N/A
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
Legal
Pauper Commander
Legal
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
N/A
Penny Dreadful
Legal
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
N/A
TLR
Legal
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

2 sets
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