Norin the Wary

A coward as an engine piece: the joke is that the card's defining trait, fleeing the moment anyone casts a spell or swings, is exactly what makes it useful. Most permanents accrue value by sitting still; this one accrues value by leaving and coming back, and it does so constantly, on a trigger neither player can fully avoid. That self-flicker is the whole design. As a 2/1 body it does nothing, and it will never block or attack on your terms because it bounces itself before combat resolves. But each return is an enters-the-battlefield event you can chain, and because the exile happens whenever any player casts a spell, the engine runs on the opponent's turn as readily as your own. Build around it with effects that fire on a creature entering and it becomes a perpetual-motion trigger source that asks for no mana and survives any sweeper short of exile-on-cast. The tension the card resolves is repeatability without a sacrifice outlet or a blink spell: the recursion is stapled to the creature itself, free and involuntary. Few red designs commit so fully to making the drawback the payoff, a deck-defining engine masquerading as an unplayable scaredy-cat.