Hypnotic Specter

The original three-mana evasive disruption creature, and the template every black flier with a punishing trigger still answers to. The design is unusually compact: a 2/2 body, flying for evasion, and a damage trigger that converts every unblocked swing into a Hymn to Tourach at one card. Making the discard random is the discipline that gives the rate its bite. It bypasses the defensive line every hand-attack spell has to negotiate (the opponent picking the least painful card to lose), which is why a turn-two Specter on the play has, for thirty years, been one of the most punishing openings black can offer. The cost structure (double black on turn three) is the constraint that holds the card in check; it locks the deck into mono-black or close to it, and it asks the build around it to actually protect the creature long enough for the trigger to fire more than once. Every Specter printed after it has been a variation on this chassis (Abyssal Specter slowed the clock and made the discard non-random, Blazing Specter kept the 2/2 body but cost a mana more for haste, Shadowmage Infiltrator swapped discard for draw), and none has displaced the original as the point of reference. The card is the proof that black's identity, hand attack joined to an evasive clock, can be expressed in four lines of text.