White-Blue especially is interested in bouncing its own creatures to retrigger ETB abilities, so that part of the card will come up in ways other than just to save a creature from removal
Not to mention that in the year following Adventures, Escape, and Companions, Play Design had good reason not to heavily push mechanics built around randomness and accumulating slow, incremental advantages
New mechanic: Station The new Station ability is the signature feature of Spacecraft, a new artifact type that bears some resemblance to Vehicles
If youre lucky, playing an Alchemy deck built around this goal could let you see a fair few Final Fantasy cards early
Clive, Ifrits Dominant / Ifrit, Warden of Inferno Clive, Ifrit's Dominant is already strong when it enters the battlefield, offering you a discard and draw effect that scales with your devotion to red