Mons's Goblin Raiders

Named for one of the game's original playtesters and printed as straight filler through Magic's earliest sets, this is a vanilla creature with nothing attached: no keyword, no trigger, no activated ability. That emptiness is exactly what makes it useful as a reference point. This was where the red one-drop started, and every Goblin that followed was built by adding something to this body without raising the rate. Goblin Patrol gave you an extra point of power for the same cost; Mogg Fanatic kept the 1/1 frame but hung a sacrifice-for-damage ability off it; Goblin Guide kept the cost but pushed the body to 2/2 and bolted on haste at the price of a card-advantage downside. The design history of the red one-drop is the history of designers asking what else they could hang on this frame for free, and the answer kept expanding: power, haste, evasion, triggered abilities, all stacked on top while the mana value stayed at one. Once functional replacements made a plain 1/1 redundant, the card was quietly retired. Its legacy is less about what it does than about being the zero-point on the curve that the rest of red aggro is measured against.