The Wretched

Combat-based theft is a design lever Magic has pulled rarely, and almost never this cleanly. Where Mind Control pays full retail for a single creature and Threaten rents one for a turn, this card converts the act of blocking into a permanent transfer: every creature that steps in front of it becomes yours at end of combat, and stays under your command until the demon leaves play. The 2/5 body is the engineering choice that makes the ability coherent. A larger power would kill blockers before they could be stolen; a smaller toughness would let any chump trade the engine off. Five toughness sat above most of what early-era decks were swinging with, so the card was designed to survive the gang-block it invites, then walk away with the spoils. The control restriction is the load-bearing clause: lose the demon to removal or a sacrifice effect and the stolen army snaps back to its owners, which means the opponent's correct play is often to refuse to block at all and eat the two damage, ceding tempo to avoid feeding a tax that compounds. That decision-tree (block and lose the creature for as long as the demon lives, or don't block and let a 2/5 demon chip you down while threatening to swing the game on any future block) is the actual card. The body is a trap, and the trap is the design.