Hostage Taker

The genius of this design is that it staples a removal spell to a theft engine and then makes you protect the body. Most "exile until" creatures, going back to Fiend Hunter, only neutralize the target: the card sits in limbo and comes back if you kill the jailer. This one hands you the keys. Whatever you exile, a creature or an artifact, becomes yours to cast while the Pirate stays on the battlefield, and the rider that lets you spend mana of any type strips away the usual color-screw caveat that makes stolen cards stick in your hand. That turns a modest body into a two-for-one that swings tempo and resources at once: you remove their best thing and threaten to play it yourself. The tension lives in the linkage. The exiled card is held hostage to the body, so killing the Pirate is not just removal, it is a hostage rescue that returns the stolen permanent to its owner before you ever get to deploy it. That gives the opponent a clean answer and gives you a clock: cast the stolen card promptly, or risk losing it to a removal spell aimed at a fragile three-toughness creature. It is a card that asks you to sequence around your own greed, and the better the thing you steal, the larger the target painted on the thief.