The commander, Winter, Cynical Opportunist, is spectacular because of his strong abilities that do exactly what you need, and the entire deck has plays that other decks cannot pull off
There was Accelerated Blue and the German Dragon in Standard, Suicide Brown and Iron Giant in Extended, good old Yawgmoth's Bargain in just about everything that allowed it, and then a lot of descendants of those initial Tinker decks that continued to get refined and grow in power until they took over Extended in New Orleans
The card is a bit more flexible than that, however, since you can put its various buffs on creatures other than the Spider you create
The card is very strong, especially in self-sacrifice decks (also known as Aristocrat decks), as you get the advantage of your creatures dying while forcing your opponents to exile creatures
As a 1/1 for a single green mana, it's not likely to affect the board based on its stat value relative to its cost