Faceless Butcher

The exile is conditional, and that condition is the entire engine. Removal that hands its target back the moment the source dies is a temporary answer dressed as a permanent one, which means the card flips from liability to combo piece the instant you can break the symmetry between its two triggers. The classic trick exploits the ordering: respond to the enters trigger by flickering or bouncing this creature before that trigger resolves, and the leaves-the-battlefield trigger goes on the stack and resolves first with nothing exiled to return. The enters trigger then resolves into an empty board state and exiles the target permanently. Point it at your own creature instead and the loop runs the other way: stash something with a valuable enters or death trigger, then bring it back on your terms. This is the card that taught a generation to read "leaves the battlefield" as a payoff rather than a downside. Cleaner versions followed (Banisher Priest welded the exile onto a smaller white body, Fiend Hunter let sacrifice decks weaponize the return), but the structure originates here: removal that doubles as a recursion outlet because the answer lives in a destructible vessel rather than printing the exile permanently onto the stack. The vulnerability is real. A 2/3 dies to nearly everything, and a kill spell your opponent lands once its enters trigger has resolved is a clean one-for-one that returns their creature unless you have arranged the timing first. The card rewards arranging it.