Mistblade Shinobi

Bouncing a creature on combat damage is a modest effect in isolation; the ninjutsu chassis is what turns it predatory. The trick is the sequence: declare an unblocked attacker, then activate ninjutsu for a single blue mana, returning that attacker to hand and putting the Shinobi onto the battlefield directly, already tapped and attacking. Because it swaps in after blockers are declared, it is staring down an open lane: barring instant-speed removal, bounce, or damage prevention, it connects, and the combat-damage trigger returns a creature the damaged player controls to its owner's hand. That bounce taxes their mana by forcing a recast and pulls a potential blocker off the board, softening the next attack rather than this one. The 1/1 body is the cost of admission, not the point. The restraint lives in what the card cannot do once it has resolved: it has no way to return itself, so it cannot re-arm its own ninjutsu, and the recurring threat reduces to that combat-damage bounce, which only fires when the Shinobi connects again. Every trigger has to be earned anew through a hole in the defending board. The bounce only ever targets the defending player's creatures, never your own, locking the card into a purely aggressive posture: an attacker's tool, not a flexible reset button. It is among the cleaner expressions of what ninjutsu was built to reward, converting evasive damage into recurring disruption for the price of one blue mana paid at the right moment.