Pit Imp

Firebreathing grafted onto an evader, with the pump deliberately capped so it can never spike for lethal the way an uncapped mana sink could. The math is intentionally small: spend one mana and it swings for one, spend two and it swings for two, and there the ceiling sits, because the ability locks after its second use each turn. That cap is the design discipline. It lets the card carry flying at a single black mana without becoming a game-ending engine every time you flood out. The zero power handles the rest of the balancing: left alone the body contributes nothing, so every point of damage is mana you chose to spend, and a toughness of one means almost any blocker or burn spell answers it for free. This is an early-black answer to the same problem firebreathing solves in red, cheap evasive bodies that convert surplus mana into chip damage, a niche black has refilled many times since with cleaner stat lines and fewer strings. Read it now and it reads as a costing snapshot: a flyer that can hit for two was priced against a creature that, before you feed it, hits for nothing at all.