Nephalia Smuggler

A blink engine stapled to the cheapest possible body, with a cost structure built to keep the loop honest. The activation is steep enough (four mana, plus the tap) that flickering a single creature for one enters-the-battlefield trigger is rarely the point: the smuggler wants a board where the same activation answers multiple questions, resetting a creature out of a removal spell's targeting window, dodging a sacrifice demand, or recurring a value trigger turn after turn. That it returns the creature under your control is the quiet leverage; the wording exiles "another target creature you control" without restriction on what made it yours, so the same line that protects your own threat doubles as a tempo trick against a stolen or borrowed body. Any exile-and-return sends the creature to a new zone and brings it back as a fresh object, which means it comes in with summoning sickness and cannot be chained into free attacks; the engine is about resetting states and re-triggering, not tapping down for combat. The 1/1 frame matters too: it commits almost nothing to the board, so the engine survives by being unthreatening, a repeatable button that asks only that you keep the mana open. Where earlier designs handed out instant-speed flicker as a one-shot spell, this attaches the effect to a permanent you can untap and aim again, which is both the appeal and the reason the price tag had to climb this high.