Cockatrice

Cockatrice is a five-mana, flying, green 2/4 creature originally printed in Alpha (1993). Whenever Cockatrice blocks or becomes blocked by a non-Wall creature, you destroy that creature at end of combat. For many old-school players, it was their first real encounter with the concept of death touch before it even existed. It’s both a nostalgic powerhouse and a fascinating piece of early card design that embodied the danger of green creatures in Magic’s first few years. Early green didn’t often get flying creatures, so Cockatrice stood out immediately. It was both a defensive and offensive card, as it could attack for chip damage in the air or stay back and kill anything that tangled with it. Around 1993-1995, in the early Type 1 and Type 2 scenes, Cockatrice occasionally appeared in decks as an anti-creature card in green midrange lists. It was sometimes played in Mono-Green Old School (93/94) decks, alongside cards like Erhnam Djinn and Force of Nature or in Green-White Control paired with Swords to Plowshares and Disenchant. Cockatrice is not on the Reserved List, it has been reprinted several times (Fourth Edition, Fifth Edition, Time Spiral).