Straw Golem

A 2/3 for a single generic mana is an aggressively undercosted body, and the drawback explains why: the golem is made of straw, and the first creature your opponent commits to the battlefield sets it alight. The design is a flavor pun executed as a mechanic, a downside keyed not to combat or to your own choices but entirely to the opponent's tempo. That makes it one of the stranger creature drawbacks of its era, because you do not control when it fires; an opponent who simply plays the game on curve removes your one-drop for free, while a control opponent holding only spells leaves a 2/3 standing indefinitely. The clause triggers on the cast, not on resolution, so the golem burns up even if their creature gets countered, which sharpens the asymmetry: you pay full price for the body and the opponent pays nothing to be rid of it. What reads as a rate-versus-restriction puzzle resolves into a near-unplayable one, since most decks want to deploy a beater against opponents who are themselves deploying creatures. The straw golem comes from a design moment when Magic was still willing to staple a vivid piece of flavor to a creature and let the mechanic be the joke, consequences for playability left as a secondary concern.