Ashnod's Intervention

A one-mana combat trick that hands its target a return-to-hand insurance policy is a strange thing until you notice it is not really built for combat at all. The +2/+0 is the sweetener; the clause that matters is the death-or-exile trigger, which turns any creature into a recursion engine for a single turn. Point it at your own creature and you can sacrifice it, chump-block with it, or feed it to a removal spell, then get it back to redeploy its enters-the-battlefield trigger next turn. That the return works on exile as well as death is the wrinkle that lifts it above a plain sacrifice-loop enabler: it slips a creature out from under exile-based removal that normally ends the conversation, and it lets you flicker something back to hand rather than to the battlefield when hand is where you want it. Instant speed is what makes the trick work as protection, letting you respond to a kill spell or a board wipe rather than committing the plan a turn early. It is a modest card asked to do a narrow job, but the job is specific: it is a black recursion tool that survives the answers black usually cannot survive, sold as a pump spell so it costs one mana.