Two life for a card isn't the best deal, but for otherwise bad ones it's wonderful and back then it was even better
3 Flubs, the Fool Fumbles His Way to Victory A High-Powered Hellbent General Flubs the Fool is unique in modern Magic design for a few reasons, but the most striking one is that Flubs was printed with an actual downside: Whenever Flubs' controller plays a land or casts a spell, they must discard a card unless they are completely hellbent or hand-less
When games reliably end after a half dozen turns or less, there just isn't room for slower, less powerful or less optimized decks to get the time to do their thing or even build much of a board presence
If you have a bunch of mana rocks plus Paradox Engine, or Jeskai Ascendancy and some mana dorks, you could easily cast a truckload of spells off Izzet Chemister in a single turn and probably win the game off a Storm card like Ignite Memories
This card once hovered above $200, and it's likely to approach those levels again in the future