Pointed Discussion

Not good... it just costs way too much to be used.

I'm not exactly sure how many strategies would exactly be crumbled to dust by being forced to block a 1/1 monster. It's just not something I imagine you can lose a game over. I can, however, easily see someone losing a game because they blew 4 precious mana on a hilariously useless monster.
Being able to increase its attack power pretty much infinitely makes it a great glass cannon, but with the insane starting cost, and the fact that it's pretty much going to die if you sneeze on it, it's a risky investment at best.

Paying 3 extra for a red Taunting Elf with haste...not great, but not terrible. The firebreathing effect is beyond useless, but since red has cards like ball lightning that can be totally eliminated by first strike, this card can be helpful.

This is no Prized Unicorn or Taunting Elf since only 1 creature has to block it instead of all, this is pretty bad.

epicous!

If it cost ONE, maybe this would be good.
Goblin Grappler is better, since at least then you get to PICK who blocks it.

Pretty useless in red, the color of targeted burn.

See when I first saw this card, I was confused. The player blocks the creature? As in, the players life points get up, block the creature, and put themselves at his mercy?

Lololol that was a long time ago

it's a goblin with a MOLOTOV C O C KTAIL! 5/5

playtesting must have been quite harsh to support the claim that this would have in any way been dangerous at 3 mana

I can't say this is useless, especially in Limited.

The firebreathing is actually the coup de grace of this card. The real point of this isn't to be Taunting, but to force a blocker to block this. Then you boost it until you get to its toughness, and you've got 1 less pesky creature.

Obviously, it would've been nice if you could do this more than once (unless everyone's drafting 4 Birds of Paradise), but you have to take what you can get.

Haste and firebreathing have a mutually exclusive use with an insultingly high cost of for a tiny 1/1.

And the third ability has the worst use imaginable on a card like that.
First of all, it's neither quite what Taunting Elf, nor what Goblin Grappler has.
Secondm you won't get anything good from this no matter what:
- Spend a ton of mana to boost him: Your opponent would gladly kill-block him with one of his wimps anyways.
- Just attack without boosting him: Fine, your opponent maybe didn't want to block it that eagerly.
But only if he only had big creatures. And unless for some reason he has nothing but utility creatures with no means to tap themselves, he'll still have the card advantage, and you're the dumb one for wasting four mana on a raging goblin.

This card would have been fine at half the cost.