Mogg Raider

A free sacrifice outlet wearing a Goblin body, which is the whole point. The pump effect is almost incidental: what matters is the colon, the no-cost activation that turns any Goblin (including itself, once it is the last one standing) into a sacrificeable resource at instant speed. That design idea, a creature whose real job is to eat other creatures for value, became one of the load-bearing pieces of an entire archetype. A free outlet lets you bank death triggers on your own terms and respond to targeted exile-based removal by sacrificing the creature in response, denying the opponent the body and keeping its dying triggers for yourself. Mogg Raider is an early, clean version of that template, stripped to the minimum: one mana, one red, a Goblin that asks for nothing to fire. Later iterations refined the package by stapling on a relevant payoff or making the sacrifice draw a card or deal damage; the pure damage version of the outlet lives elsewhere, in cards like Goblin Bombardment, where each sacrifice is a point to the face. Here the +1/+1 is the fig leaf that justifies the rate; the sacrifice is the reason it sees a board. Read it as a proof of concept for the free outlet, the friction-free engine piece every aristocrats deck since has wanted at the bottom of its curve.