Troll Ascetic

Before the keyword had a name, this was the printout of what hexproof would eventually formalize: a creature opponents simply could not touch with targeted removal, paired with a regeneration cost cheap enough to shrug off most attempts to destroy it. The combination is what made it durable in a way the 3/2 body never suggested. Edicts and regeneration-proof wraths still answer it, but the green decks of its era leaned on exactly this profile: a beater that walks past Terror, Shock, and every aura-based control plan an opponent could assemble, then survives damage-based sweepers by paying one green and a generic for regeneration. That dual insurance (untargetable by removal, recurringly hard to kill by damage) is why the card became the canonical landing spot for equipment and pump in its time, since anything you spent stuck. The text the card carries today reads "hexproof," but the printing predates the keyword's existence; Wizards backfilled the word onto an effect that had been written out longhand here first. As a design object it marks the moment the "can't be targeted" attacker stopped being a one-off and started being a repeatable template, the line that runs forward to every shroud and hexproof threat green has built around since.