Selfless Exorcist

The graveyard-policing creature that makes you pay for every big exile out of its own toughness: tapping it removes a creature card from any graveyard, but that card swings back, dealing damage equal to its power to the 3/4 body. The clever part is where the damage lands. A small creature exiles cleanly, but a fat one trades blows on the way out, and anything with four or more power kills the Exorcist outright. That is exactly the kind of card a reanimator most wants gone, so the answer prices itself: the controller weighs each large exile against keeping the body alive. Because the ability needs the tap, it usually fires once a turn, and the damage clears at cleanup, so each activation is a fresh wager, the Exorcist re-entering at full toughness every turn to pick one threat worth the risk. Rather than offer flat, costless exile against the recursion strategies of its era, this design made graveyard hate a self-pricing act, a deliberate departure from the no-downside hosers that came before it. The damage also opens a wrinkle the rate does not advertise: pump the Exorcist's toughness, or run a payoff that wants a creature taking damage, and the liability inverts into a repeatable source of damage aimed at a permanent you control.