Chimera

A chimera is a mythological, fire-breathing monster, commonly represented with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. The term can also be used for any similarly grotesque monster having disparate parts. For a long time Chimera was uniquely used on a couple of artifact creatures in Visions. As of the Theros block, however, it was re-imagined as a non-artifact creature type (except for Gold-Forged Sentinel).

Visions
For Visions the Chimeras were designed to evoke a feeling of mechanoid creatures that could combine with one another to make a singular, large monster. They form a cycle of four uncommon 2/2 artifact creatures costing that have a combat ability and a sacrifice ability to give any chimera a +2/+2 counter and that chimera's combat ability. Originally subtype-less, the subtype Chimera was specially created for these cards in the Magic Online release of Visions.


 * Brass-Talon Chimera
 * Iron-Heart Chimera
 * Lead-Belly Chimera
 * Tin-Wing Chimera

The Chimeras were the first cards to (kind of) use keyword counters. If R&D remade them today, they would definitely use keyword counters.

Amonkhet
Chimeras also exist in Amonkhet, though their nature is not elaborated upon. Majestic Myriarch was the first mono-green chimera.

Theros
On Theros chimeras are magical fusions of creatures' life essences, often multiheaded, winged and dangerous. Chimeras are suspected to be the result of the god Keranos' folly, burning mages' minds with lightning and inspiring them to create these things. Others suspect that chimeras might be linked to a now-defunct city, whose inhabitants used magic carelessly. Rise to the Challenge shows that Chimeras can be killed.

According to an Akroan tale, the god Keranos sought to test Renata by creating a beast so deadly that even she would balk at trying to hunt it. When Renata slayed this lion-ram-dragon creation effortlessly (the first Chimera of Theros), Keranos created another combination of deadlier beasts to challenge her. She slayed that beast too, and all the other countless Keranos' creations.

Notable Chimeras

 * Theros
 * Gnostro

Trivia

 * is currently the only Chimera-type creature to only have red as its color identity.