Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep

The kicker clause is the whole pitch: an 8/8 for eight mana is a fine top-end on its own, but pay the extra and you fold a nearly one-sided board wipe into the same card. The exclusion list is what turns a symmetrical Evacuation into an asymmetrical one. Merfolk, Krakens, Leviathans, Octopuses, and Serpents stay put, which means the bounce only spares a board built out of those five types; every other creature on the battlefield (the opponent's Humans, Birds, Wizards, and everything else) goes back to hand. Build a sea-monster shell and you keep your threats while the rest of the table replays its turn from scratch. The design lineage runs through the bounce-everything reset effects blue has leaned on since the early days: spells that buy a clean turn by sending the whole battlefield to hand. The twist here is making that reset a creature's enters trigger rather than a one-shot sorcery, so the same card that clears the path stays behind as a body to capitalize on the tempo it just generated. Two timing details separate the good casts from the wasted ones. The kicker is paid on cast, so the decision to reset is locked the moment the spell hits the stack. And because the reset is an enters trigger, it exists on the stack independent of its source: an opponent who kills or bounces the leviathan in response removes the body, but the wipe still resolves. You lose the 8/8, not the board sweep you paid for.