Foul Familiar

The recursion-on-a-stick design that early black kept circling: a body built to slip out of sorcery-speed removal because it can buy itself back at instant speed for a mana and a life. The cost structure spells out the tradeoff. A 3/1 for three mana that can't block is pure aggressive curve filler, the kind of attacker that trades up on offense and crumbles on defense; the bounce ability is its escape hatch when the opponent reaches for an answer. Return it in response to that removal, and they have spent a card on nothing. Replay it next turn, and the clock resumes. The life payment is the governor on the loop: every escape shaves your own total, so a creature meant to race is also taxing the resource it races against. That same self-bounce template (a small fragile body, mana-plus-life buyback, no blocking) recurs across black's history as the engine for both removal-dodging and repeatable enters-the-battlefield abuse, since a creature you can return on demand is a creature you can re-trigger on demand. Here the reentry buys only another attack, so this Spirit stays a beater with an insurance policy and never graduates into an engine. The shape is the lineage; the payoff is whatever you point it at.