Tangle Asp

Deathtouch before deathtouch had a keyword. The destruction trigger does exactly what the modern ability does in combat: any creature that touches this one in the red zone dies, regardless of size, so a 1/2 trades up against anything it blocks or anything that blocks it. The "at end of combat" delay is the tell of the era's design vocabulary, predating the streamlined wording that would later collapse this whole template into a single keyword in the rules text. Functionally it is a roadblock that no ground attacker wants to swing into and no creature wants to be blocked by, which makes the low toughness almost beside the point: the card was built to win the exchange, not survive the combat. The wrinkle is what the trigger does not cover. It fires only on blocking or being blocked, so it never threatens a creature the snake neither blocks nor is blocked by, never deters fliers it cannot reach, and never interacts with damage dealt outside combat. It is a green wall that punishes engagement rather than one that simply absorbs it, an early sketch of the deterrent role that deathtouch bodies would later refine into a clean keyword.