Leeching Licid

A creature that can choose to stop being a creature, peel its type off to become an Aura, attach to an opponent's monster, and then peel that off again to come back: this is one of Magic's earliest experiments in letting a single card live as both a body and an enchantment. The toggle is reusable, and the original wording (it loses the ability, becomes an Aura, attaches, with an optional payment to detach) was clumsy enough that all five Licids eventually received template revisions to make them function as designed. What the bookkeeping buys you is a recurring drain that slides onto a creature to bleed its controller one point each of that player's upkeeps, then slides back off if a threat to its host would otherwise strand it. That detachability is what separates a Licid from a conventional Aura: a static enchantment is a card you risk losing whenever its host dies, but a Licid can retreat to creature form and redeploy later, dodging the two-for-one that buries ordinary Auras. The toggle carries no timing restriction either, so it can detach in response to a kill spell aimed at its host and survive. The cost is friction. Every state change wants mana, and a 1/1 for does little while it sits waiting to commit. Remembered less for the damage it dealt than for being a card whose mechanic asked a creature and an Aura to be the same object.