Endless Cockroaches

A recursion engine compressed into a single creature: a body that does not stay dead, it just returns to hand to be recast. The wording is built to be self-explanatory to a beginner: a death trigger that fires when the creature hits the graveyard and bounces it back to its owner's hand. The strategic axis it sits on is not the body (a 1/1 is a 1/1) but the repeated death itself. Anything that wants a creature to die over and over (sacrifice fodder, a recurring drain trigger, a chump to throw under a removal spell each turn) finds in this exactly the loop it needs, paying only the recast cost each cycle. The catch is the one the design leans on: the recursion runs through the hand, not the battlefield, so it costs mana and a recast each time, and it leaves the board the moment the bug dies. That friction is what keeps a 1/1 with permanent resilience from being oppressive: you never get value for free, you get it for three mana a lap. It is the rare creature whose entire identity is the inconvenience it presents to a removal-based opponent, who can answer it all day and never make it stay answered.