At the time, you only needed one other creature for him to be decent (2/3 for 3 mana was standard then.) That's not so bad. But the problem is that high toughness, unlike high power, doesn't win you the game, so the fact that he could get very high toughness late game in the right deck didn't matter.

If he had 3 power he'd be decent, though, which is closer than most Homelands cards come to being good.