Kingfisher

The cantrip-on-death body, distilled to its cleanest form: a flier with no purpose but to die well. The refund clause is the only thing separating it from a vanilla 2/2 with wings, and it is a narrow refund, keyed strictly to dying. Bounce it, exile it, blink it, and the trigger never fires; the card pays out only when it goes from battlefield to graveyard. That precision is the design discipline at work. The trade is card advantage, not tempo: spending four mana on a 2/2 to chump a larger attacker is still a tempo loss, but you walk away with a fresh card off the top to absorb the sting. The body and trigger are pitched to lean on each other, since a 2/2 flier is just present enough to demand an answer, and the moment an opponent spends one, the trigger collects its toll. This is an unusual posture for a flier, a creature class that more often wants protecting; here the bird is happiest spent, fed to a sacrifice outlet or thrown under a removal spell on purpose. The death-trigger draw is the kind of value insurance that smooths a curve without ever being why you win, and it became a recurring lever for designers in the years after this effect first surfaced. The flavor closes the loop neatly: a kingfisher dives, and the card pays you back when it does.