Viscerid Armor
The +1/+1 is the cover story; the bounce clause is the design. A pump aura's structural flaw is the two-for-one waiting to happen: kill the host, and the Aura dies with it, so you spent two cards to the opponent's one. Built into this one is the escape hatch. For two mana you return it to hand in response to the host's removal, or before a chump block sends both to the graveyard, then redeploy it later. The card-disadvantage normally baked into Auras never resolves, because the Aura refuses to stay attached to a doomed creature. What it cannot do is save the host: bouncing the Aura only rescues the enchantment, leaving the creature on the battlefield (still a legal target for whatever was aimed at it). The recursion loop has a second use beyond survival, since each return-and-recast is a fresh cast and a fresh enters-the-battlefield event for anything that counts Auras or spells resolving. That puts a clause that was genuinely unusual for an early-set common onto a small, cheap permanent: most Auras of the era were a rate you committed to once and lived with. This one reframes a fragile permanent type as something closer to a reusable spell. The creature it buffs is replaceable; the card it occupies in your hand is, in practice, never fully spent.


