MTG Salvation

Chasm Skulker, but with even more card draw instead of tokens. Neat!

Oh look, a new friend for my Jhoira "draw all of the cards" deck.

...Leaves the battlefield?

Sooo... if I hypothetically target this creature with ghostly flicker, does this card return to the battlefield in time to get all of its +1/+1 counters back (doubled if I have Pir since each trigger would add 2 counters)?

Thanks, Locketkey & Lumovanis. Looking forward to more stupid Deadeye Navigator combos.

Yes, my understanding is that this works the way you're thinking: Ghostly Flicker would resolve, bringing this back as a 1/1 in time to see its own draw effect: It leaving the battlefield and being returned immediately as part of the same ability on the stack means it will see all of the cards you drew from it leaving and "refill" the counters it lost. Cards like Eldrazi Displacer, Cloudshift, Brago, King Eternal will work, and, obviously, cards like Mistmeadow Witch will not.

One thing I really like about this is that the "leaves the battlefield" clause here instead of "Dies" doesn't put commander players in the same awkward one-hit-wonder spot that cards like Elenda, the Dusk Rose do.

I'm not sure what you're asking. This effect works under the same pretense as the Eldrazi Displacer and Thought-Knot Seer pairing. You can't resolve his draw in the middle of the spell, so the draw effect goes on the stack and waits until the spell finishes resolving. So he blinks out, losing his current counters and a draw effect for the counters that were on him goes onto the stack. He reenters as per the spell. You then draw the cards and he replaces the counters he lost.

Since it will be exiled, it will not be on the battlefield for that ability to trigger. So once Ghostly Flicker's returning effect kicks in, it will simply come back in as if you just cast it. Ghostly Flicker would still be an awesome draw card anyway. 3 mana to draw X cards & put a 1/1 creature onto the battlefield that can potentially do it all again.

I am aware that it loses counters when it leaves the battlefield.

My question was merely whether Toothy returns into play in time to witness you drawing cards off of its "leaves the battlefield" trigger, triggering its first ability to return the counters and turning ghostly flicker into an awesome draw spell.

Unfortunately, whenever a permanent leaves the battlefield for any reason & returns, it loses all of the counters it gained previously & enters the battlefield as a new copy of itself.

Give it phasing?

phasing wouldn't do anything to it. Phasing doesn't cause a permanent to leave/enter the battlefield, but instead to be treated as though it didn't exist.