Aladdin
The Arabian Nights design experiment in red's color pie: theft as a tap ability, on a 1/1 body, gated behind a steep activation. Red's reputation for stealing things (Threaten, Act of Treason, the long lineage of temporary grabs) starts in earnest here, but Aladdin steals a specific axis (artifacts) and steals them indefinitely, for as long as the body sticks. That conditional is the entire design discipline: the cost looks cheap until you remember the 1/1 has to survive a turn cycle to keep the Mox, the Sol Ring, the equipment you just lifted. Every removal spell aimed at Aladdin is also a reclaim spell for the artifact's controller, which makes the card a puzzle rather than a heist: protect the rogue, or watch the prize walk back. The flavor reading is unusually tight for the era; the activation is the lamp-rub, the leash on the effect is the wish's catch. Functionally, this is the ancestor of every red artifact-stealing effect that followed, from Hijack to Daretti's ultimate to the various Goblin tinkerers who borrow rather than break. Most of those descendants traded the permanence for a lower rate or a wider target pool. Aladdin kept the indefinite duration and paid for it in fragility, which is a trade red has rarely been offered since.




