Serpentine Basilisk

Deathtouch before deathtouch had a name. The "destroy any creature it damages in combat" template predates the streamlined keyword by years, and green ran it the classic way: a body that turns every block or attack into a trade upward. The 2/3 stat line matters precisely because it survives the exchange it forces; small creatures bounce off it and die, and anything that does trade has spent a real card to kill a four-drop. Morph is what lifts the design above a vanilla regenerator's cousin. Played face down for , it disguises itself as just another anonymous 2/2 in a format full of them, and the flip is cheap enough to ambush a blocker mid-combat: the opponent commits a creature to a fight they think they win, you turn the basilisk up before damage, and the destroy trigger collects them at end of combat regardless of toughness. That instant-speed reveal is what makes the slow, combat-only destruction read as a threat rather than a liability. What dates the card is the end-of-combat delay and the fact that the modern deathtouch keyword does the same work on cheaper, smaller bodies without the bookkeeping. As a snapshot of how green policed combat before the rules language caught up, though, the basilisk is the honest article.