Flicker

The card that gave a verb to a whole category of effects. Before this, blinking a permanent was something white did in passing, tucked onto the back of larger spells; this was the first design built around the trick as its entire purpose, and it stamped its name onto the mechanic permanently. The effect is deceptively narrow: exile a nontoken permanent and return it immediately, an action that does nothing on a vanilla creature and everything on one with a value trigger waiting on entry. That gap between useless and broken is the whole point. It resets summoning sickness, untaps a tapped creature, sheds counters and auras, and re-fires whatever happens when a permanent arrives, all from a single sorcery-speed window. That sorcery restriction is what shapes the card's use: you cannot hold it up to save a creature from a removal spell already on the stack, so every abuse has to be proactive and planned rather than reactive. Every descendant since has been measured against the template set here: Cloudshift and Ephemerate undercut the rate for instant speed and recursion; Restoration Angel attaches the effect to a body that blinks on its own terms. The mechanic outgrew the card itself. "Flicker" is now the standard term for an entire archetype of value engines, used by players who have never seen the original printing and never needed to.