Astral Slide

Cycling was an early-era engine mechanic, a way to turn flooded draws into card flow, and this enchantment converted every one of those small replacement-draws into a removal spell with no card cost attached. The mechanism is elegant: you were already paying to cycle for a card, so the exile-and-return rider tags along for free, blinking a blocker before damage or fizzling a removal spell aimed at your creature. Because the trigger fires whenever any player cycles, the control deck built around it (the "Slide" archetype, frequently paired with Lightning Rift) ran cycling lands and a thick cyclable curve purely to keep the engine ticking across both players' turns. The return-at-next-end-step clause is what lifted it above a Fog: aimed at your own creatures it became a value loop, re-triggering enters-the-battlefield abilities every time you drew, with Eternal Witness lines folding in cleanly. What balances the design is that the exile is tethered to someone cycling rather than to a mana cost you control: the engine stalls when you run dry on cyclers, and it does nothing the turn you have no card to pitch. That dependence on a steady stream of cycling triggers is exactly why it anchored a deck rather than slotting into anything that merely wanted spot removal: build-around enchantment in its clearest form, near-inert alone and relentless once the deck is shaped to feed it.