Willow Faerie
A green flier at the cheapest meaningful rate, and one of the small set of cards Homelands produced that did exactly what its slot asked and nothing more. Green almost never gets evasion: it is the color of large ground bodies and mana, and flying is normally something it has to fight through rather than possess. A 1/2 flier for two costs the color a body that trades down to most things on the ground but holds the air against the small evasive threats other colors lean on, which is the entire reason green is allowed to have it at all. The toughness over power is the tell: this is a blocker that happens to fly, not a clock. There is no second ability, no tribal payoff written on the card, no rider to build around; it is the floor of what a green two-drop with wings looks like, a common from a set whose reputation rarely extends to scrutiny of its filler. The design lesson it carries is quieter than that reputation suggests: even an off-color keyword stays balanced if you keep the stats honest and the rate plain.

