Depth Defiler

The cast trigger is the whole structural point: both modes fire off the cast, not on resolution, so the value banks before the 3/5 ever touches the battlefield. Counter the body and you still ate the bounce or the card draw; the effect is already spent. That is what rescues an unremarkable statline. Un-kicked, five mana buys a Man-o'-War rider that either bounces a creature or lets a player draw two and pitch one, a small net gain in cards rather than a wash. Pay the extra colorless and the spell stops being modal at all: kicker collapses the usual "pick one, wish for both" tension into a single line where you bounce a threat and dig two deep in the same cast. Devoid is the quieter piece of the puzzle. The card reads blue on the mana cost but has no color, which matters far more for what casts it than for what it does: colorless-matters shells that want Eldrazi bodies and count wastes-style sources see this as a colorless creature, not a blue spell. Because those decks are already flush with the colorless mana kicker asks for, the six-mana "both" line is closer to the intended mode than a stretch goal, with the cheaper single-mode cast held back for the turns you are a source short. It is a tempo creature built to be run by ramp, dressed as a value creature run by blue.