Sakashima's Student

Two effects that both hate the summoning-sickness clock, welded into one body. The clone half wants a big attacker already on the board to become; the ninjutsu half wants a small unblocked attacker gone, bounced to hand, so it can slip in behind that unblocked creature tapped and attacking. Put together, the payoff is arriving as a copy of the scariest thing in play, already in the red zone, having paid a single blue and one generic to do it. That sequencing is the whole trick: you swing with a small evasive creature, it goes unblocked, you return it, and the Student comes down mid-combat as a fresh copy of your best creature, dodging the sorcery-speed vulnerability a hard-cast clone would suffer and skipping the turn it would otherwise spend tapped out and inert. The Ninja subtype it grafts onto whatever it copies is the connective tissue, keeping it live for other ninjutsu enablers and tribal payoffs. Named for the shapeshifter Sakashima, whose own designs traffic in copying legends and dodging the legend rule, the Student is the aggressive, tempo-first reading of that identity: not a value engine but a combat ambush that happens to wear someone else's face.