Shadowmage Infiltrator

Jonny Magic's invitational card, and one of the rare invitational designs that actually moved the format needle rather than sitting as a curiosity. The 1/3 body is the load-bearing decision here: too small to trade up in combat, too durable to die to the incidental burn and chump-attacks that plague one-toughness threats, and tuned precisely to survive the table long enough to connect turn after turn. Fear does the connecting. In an era where most evasion was flying (and flying was easy to wall), a creature that could only be stopped by artifact or black blockers slipped past the green and white ground stalls that defined the period, turning each combat step into a card. That marriage (cheap, near-unkillable evasion stapled to repeatable card advantage on a single permanent) is what made it a four-of in the blue-black control and tempo decks of its day. It does not win the game by itself; it wins the long game by refusing to stop drawing, asking the opponent to find an answer or watch the card differential widen every turn. Wizards has chased this template many times since: a small evader that converts combat into cards, the threat that is more dangerous the longer it lives than the turn it lands. Few hit the rate this cleanly, because few were willing to put it at three mana on a body this hard to remove with damage.