Nebula Dragon

Seven mana for a 4/4 flier that shoots something for three on the way in is a rate that reads as a common more than a bomb, and that arithmetic is the point. This is the modern shape of the vanilla-plus dragon: a curve-topping evasive body stapled to a value trigger, tuned so a slower deck gets a two-for-one when it finally untaps into it. The damage clause is where the flexibility lives. It reaches faces, it clears a blocker so the dragon can swing in unopposed the following turn, or it pairs with the flying body to close a race that a bare 4/4 would lose. Three is a deliberately modest number: enough to kill most early creatures and shave a real chunk off a life total, not enough to answer the fatties this thing is meant to trade air superiority with. Red has printed variations on the enters-and-burns dragon for a long time, and the tuning knob is always the split between how much of the payoff sits on the body versus the trigger. Here the body is unremarkable and the trigger does the reassuring work: even against removal held for it, you have already gotten your three damage, so the card refuses to be a pure blank. That is the whole design brief for a color-defining top-end common-to-uncommon dragon, executed without frills.