Dreamdrinker Vampire

Adapt was built with a ceiling in mind: it only places a counter when the creature has none, so a single body can never soak infinite mana into infinite growth. This vampire is a clever misuse of that ceiling. The counter is a one-time gain (the body climbs its single step and stops), but the menace clause fires on any counter placed, not just adapt's own. That inverts what adapt is usually good for. Here the interesting line is the opposite of pumping: because adapt refuses to work once the creature carries a counter, you want to strip the counter back off (a counter mover, a bounce-and-replay, anything that returns the body to zero) so the mana sink can fire again, and each re-arming hands out menace for the turn. Left to its own devices, though, the evasion is a one-shot: it can adapt exactly once, gains menace for that turn, and then sits inert as a two-step lifelink attacker with no way to fire the switch again. The pairing is the whole point: lifelink wants the swing to connect, menace forces it through blockers, and the counter is the switch that arms the second in service of the first. The same mana you would spend making a creature bigger instead buys a creature that is harder to stop, which is the better purchase when the body already drains life on contact.