Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker

The first time the elder dragon was rendered as a planeswalker, and the design reads like a thesis statement on what eight-mana villainy should feel like. Every line is a power play dressed as a loyalty ability: the plus rips apart a noncreature permanent while building toward the kill, the minus steals a creature outright (a Threaten that never gives it back) and doubles as the dragon's primary self-defense, since the body it takes can turn around and block for him, and the ultimate is one of the most theatrical numbers ever stamped on a card, seven damage paired with seven cards discarded and seven permanents sacrificed. The math underneath the spectacle is brisk. Starting loyalty is five, and the plus adds three each turn, so two activations carry him to eleven and arm the minus-nine on the third turn he is in play. Holding him there is the real cost: those two plus turns each tore up a noncreature permanent rather than clearing the board of attackers, so survival leans on the manabase, on early interaction, and on whatever creature the minus pulled across to chump. The Grixis identity (blue, black, and red, weighted hard toward black) is the discipline that gates him behind a manabase built to earn him. Later printings would split Bolas into smaller, more efficient cards, each handling one slice of his menace. This is the undiluted version, the one that tried to fit the whole personality of a scheming god onto a single card and let the cost speak for the ambition.