Misshapen Fiend

The Mercenary tutor chains of this era worked by mana value: certain Mercenaries could pull a cheaper creature directly into play, so the whole subtheme depended on a deck stuffed with legal targets sitting at the bottom of the ladder. This is one of those targets, built to exist rather than to threaten, fetched and recurred rather than cast on its own merits. The flying is the only thing distinguishing it from a vanilla body, and it is there to make a single point of evasive damage occasionally matter, not to provide a clock. Printed at common because the mechanic needed a wide, inexpensive base to function: without enough small bodies to grab, the marquee tutors had nothing to chain into. The Horror Mercenary type line is the giveaway. This is a placeholder for an engine that wanted creatures, supplied cheaply so the tutor chain stayed legal and deep. Strip away that chain and there is nothing to evaluate, which is precisely what a card designed as a tutor floor should look like.