Vodalian Mindsinger

The theft clause reads on the card's current power, and that self-reference is the whole engine. Unkicked, it is a 2/2 that can only pull the smallest bodies on the far side (a token, a mana dork, anything at power one or zero); the effect is real but slight, because the Mindsinger can never take a creature bigger than itself. The two kicker taxes are what pay for a bigger heist: each kick stacks two +1/+1 counters, so paying one turns it into a 4/4 that can lift a creature of power three or less, and paying both makes it a 6/6 that can lift almost anything opposing it. Every counter you buy widens the legal target pool at the same moment it grows the body, which rewards patience over jamming it on curve. What complicates the plan is the leash: the control effect lasts only as long as you hold the Mindsinger, so removal aimed at your own creature becomes a two-for-one against you and returns the stolen creature to its owner. Blue steals plenty (Control Magic and Sower of Temptation set the template), but almost never on a body it can also inflate with counters; the color-pie stretch here is spent on the red-and-green kicker mana, not on the base spell, letting a blue deck willing to splash grow its thief and its theft as it enters the battlefield.