Cephalid Retainer

Tappers were the workhorse blue uncommons of early Magic, and this one belongs to the bloodline that runs from Master Decoy through every "tap target creature" body since: a defensive lock that converts a stalled ground war into permanent control of an attacker. What sets the rate here is the price tag. Two blue mana per activation is steep enough that you rarely get to tap two creatures in a turn without bending your whole curve around it, and the body asks for a serious commitment before it even comes online. The flying clause is the real tell about how these were designed to fail: a tapper that cannot touch the air loses to exactly the evasive threats it most wants to neutralize, which is why ground-based tappers always read as soft answers rather than hard ones. As an Octopus pulled into a graveyard-matters environment, the Retainer sat in the part of the blue color pie that controlled tempo without ever closing a game itself: it stalls, it stalls again, and it waits for something else to win. That patience is the whole identity. It is a card that buys turns at a cost most decks could not afford to keep paying.