Carrion Ants

Believe it or not, this was a pretty good card once upon a time. In the pre-Necro days -- you know, back in the Real Magic days, where all a man needed in life was a Serra Angel, a few counterspells and a generous match length -- this served as sort of a neo-Nantuko Shade. It certainly ruined more than its fair share of my casual games, that's for sure.

If memory serves,  it was actually a fairly valuable card, as well, until Chronicles got its grubby, white-bordered hands on the set. The fresh infusion of ants not only destroyed the card's price, it showed that a four-mana 4/5 that a) can't block and b) with an upkeep cost of four mana just wasn't that good, especially in a world with Erhnam Djinn and Order of the Ebon Hand. Shocking, I know, but we can't stop the times from changing.

There's already a pretty good update to this duder.

Spoiler warning: I already mentioned this guy. I know that the original that inspired both these guys was Frozen Shade, but Nantuko Shade is an insect and, therefore, clearly directly descended from our friends Carrion Ants. You can disagree if you like, but you're wrong, regardless of the facts.

In any case, there have been a handful of ants across the history of Magic. Their abilities are all over the place -- Fire Ants and Ant Queen, what's the connection? -- but most seem to be trying to capture the flavor of a swarm. But, like I said, they're really, really all over the place; black ants get pump effects, red ants are Pyroclasms, green ants chew through mana, those little ones that are half black and half red eat lands at a positively Strip Mine pace -- it's all very confusing. Half the cards seem focused on swarms eating things and the other half seem focused on charging you an arm and a leg for a bunch of ants. Carrion Ants is in that second category, but I think that's firmly green's slice of the ant-color pie; if we're gonna have black-mana Carrion Ants, they oughta be eating carrion, first and foremost, as their mechanical function.

... This might work better at 1GB, but Legends doesn't have enemy-colored gold cards -- it does have a few three-color legends, but all its two-colored guys are friendly pairings. Fun fact: There are no blue or white ants. Maybe that'll be my life goal -- infiltrate wizards to leave a hyper-intelligent blue-white hive mind ant creature in their file.