Lotus Guardian

Seven mana to put a five-color rock onto the battlefield: that is the trade this Dragon offers, and the trade is steep enough that the card has always lived more in flavor than in any serious mana engine. Tapping for any color of mana is an effect that an artifact rock usually delivers for one or two, so paying seven for it only makes sense if the body is doing the real work. The body, fortunately, is a flier that blocks and attacks while the fixing sits underneath. The design reads as the multicolor mandate of its era expressed through a single creature: a beater that also smooths the wildly demanding gold-and-domain manabases of the period, folded into one card so a player short on lands could deploy the threat and the fixing at once. The tension is the cost. Seven mana is late-game money, and by the time you can cast it the color-fixing is usually a problem you have already solved, which leaves the 4/4 flier carrying the slot. This is a faithful rendering of that era's theme rather than a card that ever reshaped how mana bases get built, and its honesty about its own rate is most of what holds the interest here.