Will-o'-the-Wisp

A flying body for a single black mana, with a regeneration ability tied to the same color: on paper that reads as two premium keywords stapled to a one-drop. The catch is the 0/1 frame, a creature that cannot threaten anything on its own and exists purely to block and survive. This is an attrition piece, a wall against fliers that the opponent has to overcommit to remove, with mana as the only renewable resource gating its survival. The dated part is not the rate but the assumption underneath: that a creature with no offensive presence and no triggered value would be worth a card simply because it was hard to kill. Modern design moved decisively the other way, loading one-drops with enter-the-battlefield effects, card draw, or graveyard relevance, because a body that only blocks and regenerates does not generate the incremental advantage contemporary decks are built around. Regeneration itself was largely retired as an evergreen mechanic, replaced by indestructible, ward, and protection variants that are cleaner to template. As an artifact of the original Alpha design language, it marks the seam where Magic pivoted from treating "hard to remove" as a sufficient virtue to demanding "hard to remove and does something."