Iceridge Serpent

Common tempo has always leaned on the same wager: pay a little extra body tax to bundle a creature and a bounce spell into one card, and hope the swing carries before the opponent recasts what you sent home. This is a plain instance of that bargain. Five mana buys a 3/3 that unwinds an opponent's creature the turn it lands, a fine swing on curve and a dead trigger on an empty board, since the ability needs a legal target and fizzles when the opponent controls nothing. The soft body is where the discipline lives: a 3/3 at this cost is deliberately under-rate, undercutting a bounce trigger this clean so it does not become an automatic include, especially anywhere it can be flickered for repeat value. The bounce is unconditional but temporary and, crucially, targeted. Because it targets, it slides off hexproof entirely and still has to pay any ward cost the way a targeted removal spell would; if you cannot pay ward, the trigger is countered, so it can price the bounce out of range. What it does handle is indestructible or oversized, because returning rather than destroying sidesteps the stats and the death-triggers alike. But the creature comes back, so the value banks as tempo, not attrition: you are buying a turn, not removing a problem. The Serpent type is inheritance and decoration, a nod to the long line of oversized blue closers; everything you are paying for lives on the enter trigger.