Yarok's Wavecrasher

The bounce is not a drawback so much as a payment schedule. A 4/4 for four is already a fair blue rate, and the return-a-creature clause reads like a tax attached to it, until you notice that the tax is refundable. Sending back a Mulldrifter, a Cloudblazer, or an Elvish Visionary means you have already banked the value and get to spend it again; the Wavecrasher becomes a reusable trigger button that pays for the loop. The clause is mandatory but it must hit another creature, which is where the design draws its line: with no other creature in play the ability simply does nothing, and with only a single value engine on the board you are forced to pick it up before it has done fresh work. That constraint keeps the card from being a free upgrade and also names exactly what it wants around it, a critical mass of bodies whose entry triggers would rather be recast than left idle. Bouncing your own permanent has long been a color-pie staple for tempo and value alike, and this elemental leans on the value half: replay the same enters-the-battlefield spell often enough and the beater in front of you starts to matter less than the well it keeps re-digging. As a standalone body it is serviceable; surrounded by ETB creatures it is the shovel.