Degavolver

The Volver cycle sold a wedge-color thesis with one body each: a single-color creature that earns its extra power by reaching for the two enemy colors it cannot cast on its own. This one is white at heart, with black and red kickers (the Mardu slice), and the design move worth studying is that the two kicker costs are independent rather than a fork. You do not pick one mode. Cast it bare for a 1/1 doing nothing the printed cost suggests; pay the black kicker for two counters and "Pay 3 life: Regenerate this creature"; pay the red for a counter and first strike; pay both and you have spent three extra mana to assemble a 4/4 first striker that regenerates. The costs compound rather than compete, so the payoff is gated entirely by how much of its full color identity your mana can actually produce on the turn you cast it. That additivity is also the catch. A 1/1 in the opener and a 4/4 first striker several turns later are the same card; the gap between them is purely a question of whether a three-color base cooperated. It reads as a flexible curve-filler and plays as a mana sink that punishes a stumbling wedge manabase, which is the tension this kind of design was reaching for: a creature whose floor and ceiling are set not by what it costs but by how many off-color sources you can muster when you commit it.