It enters with eight counters, and whenever it dies if it had a counter, it returns to the battlefield with one less counter on your next end step
Then, in the later stages of the game, you can activate The Soul Stone and exile a creature you control in order to reanimate a creature from your graveyard every upkeep
Its utility is extremely narrow as you can only play it in five color decks, and it's not even a legend
But thats exactly not why the game works, and why it had over 15 million downloads a week after its launch: It works because it captures the original games spirit of exploration, even if its players said goodbye to their childhood home years ago
Turnaround is comparable to PSA at the mid-range tiers
Him gaining indestructible on the player's turn helps with this, but can also be exploited in a myriad of other ways