Grazilaxx, Illithid Scholar
Two triggers that pull in opposite directions, resolved into a single engine. The bounce ability treats blocks as a bluff: declare an attack, and when a creature gets stopped by a blocker, it returns to hand instead of dying, which means the opponent's block accomplishes nothing except telling you which lane is closed. The draw ability rewards the lanes that stay open, converting any turn where your creatures connect into a fresh card (one draw per player your creatures damage, not one per attacker, so the reward is about landing a hit rather than swarming). Put them together and combat stops being a math problem about trading bodies; it becomes a question of whether the opponent can profitably block at all. If they block, they blank their own creature and you reload the bounced attacker; if they don't, you draw. The 3/2 body is too fragile to win a race by itself, so the design leans on cheap, evasive, or recursive attackers that don't mind being sent home. The bounce clause also quietly launders enters-the-battlefield triggers: any attacker with a useful ETB returns to hand ready to be re-cast every time it runs into a wall. This is the tempo-flicker-and-draw creature that blue theory keeps circling, where the card advantage is not a payoff bolted onto a body but the direct output of how you attack.
