As a baseline, I love having Counterflux as my counter, Return to Dust for artifact/enchantment hate, Swords to Plowshares as creature hate, Wild Ricochet for shenanigans, and either Boros Charm or Faith's Reward to respond to board wipes
Cruella De Vil, Miserable as Usual allows you to return a character back to a player's hand , showing off that once a character is on the field, they can be bounced back to their owner, forcing them to pay more ink to bring them back or get rid of them
They dont put -1/-1 counters on them because, well, they arent creatures
When you cannot get cheap cards you want that give you life you might as well get something really robust and powerful with the potential to gain vast quantities of life
This is fine but pretty far from exciting, it is just annoyingly narrow compared to the alternatives