Restless Dead

The pure expression of the Skeleton template: a 1/1 body whose entire reason to exist is the regenerate ability stapled to it, priced so that one black mana buys it out of any single point of combat or removal damage that does not exile or bounce. The design logic is the chump-blocker-that-survives, a creature meant to hold a ground stalemate by trading repeatedly against attackers and walking away each time, as long as you keep black mana open. The body is irrelevant, the toughness is irrelevant, and the value lives entirely in the recurring tax you pay to keep it on the table. Skeletons of this exact shape have been printed in nearly every black-heavy set since the game's earliest years, varying the cost and the stats while leaving the regenerate clause untouched, because it is one of black's cleanest demonstrations of its color-pie identity: death as an inconvenience rather than an ending. What dates it is not the ability but the rate. The toughness is too small to block anything meaningful, and modern removal increasingly bypasses regeneration entirely with exile or -X/-X effects, leaving the regenerate cost paying for protection against a narrowing band of threats. The mechanic stays legible across decades; the math around it has quietly turned the card into a relic, an evergreen ability outliving the body that once justified it.