It costs one mana, it flies, and it has an
ability that passively makes it get bigger,
permanently. I'm seeing visions of Tarmogoyf
again!
This one's real simple-- it's an incredibly
potent attacker in a blue aggro or midrange
deck. Its only weakness is that you want to play
four copies to ensure you see one in your
opening hand, but it's a poor draw late in the
game and you can't just drop a second copy and
swing with the first because you need at least
one other creature to get the counters flowing.
"Bird Mutant?" That's fine, I suppose. It looks
an awful lot like a pterodactyl to me -
foreshadowing Muraganda somewhere down the line,
perhaps? (Start writing those letters, Lost
World fans!) Evolve is a mechanic that rewards
careful deck construction, as illustrated by
Cloudfin Raptor. With the right support, you
could be attacking with a 4/5 flying creature in
just three or four turns. Even if you just toss
a bunch of "generally good" creatures in a deck
with the Raptor, it'll usually top out at around
2/3, which is a pretty good return for one blue
mana. It'll never be as dominating as Delver of
Secrets, but that's a good thing - and besides,
Delver of Secrets isn't a mutant pterodactyl.
Welcome back readers todays card of the day is
Cloudfin Raptor a powerful aggressive blue
flyer. In standard this card is cheap enough
that blue decks sporting an aggressive theme
could make good use of this flier as soon he
grows to Delver like sizes and can provide a
nice evasive body. In other competitive formats
I don’t see this card as being as powerful due
to the nature of growth and having a powerful
creature up front may be preferable in older
formats. In casual and multiplayer this card
grows over the course of the game and is never a
dead card as it can provide early aggression or
an ok blocker making it useful during the
entirety of the game. In limited this card is a
solid pick for an aggressive simic deck as
evasion is key and this card is one mana as you
flush out your curve. Overall an aggressive
early creature that scales well and should be
seen in numerous places.
Today's card of the day is Cloudfin Raptor
which is a one mana 0/1 Blue with Flying and
Evolve. This is a very easy creature to
trigger the Evolve keyword for and a 1/2 evasive
attacking on the second turn is a great way for
an aggressive deck to start a game. It is much
weaker later on and is a particularly bad
topdeck, but overall this is very likely to see
play in Simic, Flying, or other combat oriented
Blue decks.
In Limited this is a one drop with evasion with
a fairly easy to overcome drawback, barring a
bad late topdeck, that doesn't prevent it from
having value in any Blue deck. Evolve is
very easy to trigger on a
0/1 and any Sealed build should include this,
while in Booster it is well worth early in a
pack for the early game threat potential.
