Eternal Scourge

The genius here is that the drawback is the engine. Most creatures dread opposing interaction; this one converts it into a delivery system. When an opponent points a removal spell or targeted ability at the body, the trigger exiles it instead of letting it die, and the cast-from-exile clause lets you recast it for full cost. The result is a threat with no real card-disadvantage cost against targeted answers: an opponent can clear the board, but the creature reappears in exile, recastable next turn. That self-replacing quality is what grindy and combo strategies prize, turning a 3/3 into recurring fuel rather than a one-shot. Misthollow Griffin pioneered the cast-from-exile clause, but that card needed an outside enabler to reach exile in the first place; this one supplies its own enabler in the same text box, folding the recursion trick and a self-protecting trigger into a single card. The Food Chain interaction is the headline use, and it does not depend on the targeting trigger at all: Food Chain exiles a creature and produces mana equal to its mana value plus one, restricted to casting creatures. So you exile this for four mana, recast it for three, and net one creature-only mana per loop, generating arbitrary mana to pour into any creature you can then cast for a win. The body and rate are unremarkable alone; what makes the card matter is how reliably its two clauses combine into a loop you can build a deck around.