Orcish Mechanics

An early formalization of a loop the artifact set kept gesturing at: turn the surplus of cheap artifacts into a repeatable two-damage Shock on a stick. The body is incidental (a 1/1 is a tap-and-die rate even in 1994); the value lives entirely in the activation, and the activation lives entirely in whether the rest of the deck feeds it. That dependency is the design discipline. Without artifacts to throw, the creature is below the curve; with them, it converts board presence into reach in a way red rarely got at common in the early game. The lineage runs forward through Goblin Welder, Krark-Clan Shaman, and the broader sacrifice-for-damage red subtheme that later sets would refine. This is the unpolished version of that idea: a sacrifice outlet that closes games, gated behind a tap and a body that cannot defend itself. The rate looks quaint now, but the structural move (turn artifacts into burn, repeatably, at common) was one of the first times red was handed a recursive damage engine that did not require a combat step.