Loch Korrigan

Firebreathing with a hybrid pip is the design lesson here, and the lesson is about cost flexibility rather than power. The creature is cast with black mana, but its repeatable +1/+1 can be paid with either blue or black once the Spirit is on the board. A mono-black deck spends one black per activation; a Dimir shell taps whichever color it has spare. That is precisely what hybrid mana was reaching for in this era of activated abilities: a single pump cost that stays live in a blue-black build without locking the firebreathing into one color's mana base. The body it grows is a fragile 1/1, so the pump works as combat pressure rather than a kill: pushing a point through, trading up against a small blocker, or freezing a block that the opponent declines to make. Repeatable pump always lives or dies on leftover mana, and a one-pip cost that two colors can satisfy keeps the floor low enough to matter deep into a flooded, grindy game where excess lands would otherwise sit idle. The whole reason this small Spirit exists is to launder surplus mana into incremental damage, and the hybrid pip is the lever that sets how cheaply it can keep doing so, turn after turn.