Lay Claim

Permanent theft usually confines itself to creatures: Control Magic set the template, and its descendants inherited the target restriction along with the rate. This aura pays a steep premium over that four-mana baseline to drop the restriction entirely, seizing anything that sits on the battlefield: a creature, an artifact, an enchantment, a planeswalker, a land. That breadth is what pushes it out of tempo range and into finisher territory, and it comes with an obvious liability. Theft is a plan that only works when the table has something worth taking; against a board with no juicy target, a seven-mana aura rotting in your opening hand is a game you are already losing. The cycling clause is the hedge against exactly that. When there is a target, you pay full price and walk off with your opponent's best permanent; when there isn't, you spend two mana to swap the dead card for something live and never eat the full cost of having drawn it. Both halves have to exist for the effect to earn a maindeck slot: a naked seven-mana steal spell is a luxury, but bolting a cantrip onto the floor turns the worst case into a minor inconvenience rather than a wasted card. The steal is the ceiling; the cycling is what makes running the ceiling defensible.