Venom

An Aura built entirely around the combat step, and a clean expression of green's early-era philosophy that creatures should win fights by mauling whatever touches them. The deathtouch keyword did not exist yet in this period, so the effect had to be spelled out longhand: this is what deathtouch-by-combat looked like before the mechanic was abstracted into a single word. The design is a defensive trap as much as an aggressive buff. Because the kill resolves at end of combat rather than on first strike, the enchanted creature still takes its share of combat damage and can die in the same exchange, so the destruction is mutual rather than a free pick. The Wall carve-out is the telling restriction, and notice which side it checks: the clause cares about the type of the other creature, not the enchanted one. Venom only kills a non-Wall opponent, but it works just as well bolted onto your own Wall to pick off non-Wall attackers as it does on an attacker mowing down non-Wall blockers. What makes the card historically interesting is the template itself. Modern deathtouch keys off damage; this clause keys off the act of blocking or being blocked, so it triggers even when no damage connects, then resolves on a delayed end-of-combat clause that a contemporary card would compress into a static keyword. It belongs to the period when every effect was a paragraph, before keywording turned combat-kill into a one-line shorthand nearly every color now shares.