Binding Grasp

A rental, not a purchase. Where Control Magic took a creature for keeps at the same four mana, this version attaches a recurring tax: at the beginning of each of your upkeeps you either feed it another or hand the creature back. That single tax does all the design work here. It turns permanent theft into a lease you have to keep paying, which reframes the card around tempo rather than card advantage. The upkeep cost is flat ( regardless of what you stole), so the real decision is whether your mana can absorb a standing two-mana tariff turn after turn while you also try to win the game. The +0/+1 is almost an afterthought, a small concession to keep the stolen body from dying to a point of incidental damage while it works for you. Friction is the design's reason for existing. Blue is the color of unconditional theft, and the clean version of this effect already existed; what this card sells instead is a steal that the controller has to keep refueling, so the moment your mana gets stretched thin (a counterspell to hold up, a board to develop) the lease lapses on its own. It is the conditional-control template that shows up whenever designers want to hand a deck a steal effect without handing it a permanent two-for-one, and it predates most of the cards that later refined the idea.