Bronze Horse

OK, this was another card that demanded a look at the wiki. I couldn't tell what was going on here -- was it a reference to the Trojan Horse? Is it filled with angry cat people, hellbent on showing those Greeks how it's done? Was it a war machine from Antiquities? Why is it breathing fire, but doesn't have Dragon Engine firebreathing?

The result? I found out that it's got the highest combined power and toughness of any artifact creature in the set. Well, damn, if that ain't something.

In short, I'm working with a blank slate here. Some (implied) truths:
1. This isn't based on the Trojan Horse. The Trojan Horse was supposed to look innocuous, but be filled with hard-bodied Greek soldiers. It didn't have a giant club for a tail and it certainly didn't breathe fire.
2. This is a giant machine. Its stats imply massive and its art implies massive, despite the fact that there's no scale given. In the future, I expect Bronze Horse to be smashing buildings and gleefully eating bell towers.
3. It breathes fire.
4. It needs someone to run its more intricate machinery. That's what the bit about controlling another creature refers to.

So, here we go:

So, it's a little tighter, a little bigger and it breathes fire. I think I hit all the bases.

Oh, that last bit? Well, Bronze Horse is a victim of "I hate it when that jagoff across from me Lightning Bolts my dude after combat" syndrome. No one in the history of Magic has felt good about Lightning Bolting a 4/4 -- well, no one without serious, underlying mental conditions -- but here we are, with the original Bronze Horse being protected against exactly that behavior. Disintegrate and Fireball could nuke it for 5 mana, I suppose, and that's a tempo gain (theoretically, but it's the kind of tempo gain I wouldn't want on my permanent record). I didn't like the original's narrow, "Swords me Swords me" nature, nor did I like that any jackass (even a Jackal Pup) could pilot a giant, fire-breathing, robot horse. I really didn't like that it had such weird defensive abilities when Erhnam Djinn blocked and killed it.

The solution? Give it some tribal synergy -- it's hard to go wrong with some tribal synergy -- and make the upside better.