Rocket Launcher (Original Art)

Originally printed in Antiquities (1994), Rocket Launcher stood out immediately – it looked nothing like a traditional fantasy artifact. Amid swords, goblins, and djinns, this mechanical weapon represented the more experimental, almost “proto-steampunk” side of early Magic. Flavor-wise, it’s literally a magical siege weapon. The drawback (“destroy it if you used it this turn”) reflects how it burns itself out after firing, much like an unstable experimental device. It functions as one of the first repeatable colorless damage sources. At its core, Rocket Launcher is a mana sink and flexible damage source, you pay 4 mana to cast it, then (2) per damage to any target. In the early days of Type 1, it occasionally appeared in Mono-Brown decks as a backup finisher – particularly when Nevinyrral’s Disk and Su-Chi defined artifact control. It could clean up small creatures or close games where you had excess mana. Rocket Launcher is not on the Reserved List.