Stats: Stealth Bird is Level 3, making it Gravity Bind friendly, which we will see is a good thing.  It’s a Dark (which has a lot of support) and it’s a Winged Beast (which has little support that matters for this card).  It has an ATK of 700, allowing it to slip under Messenger of Peace, and making it a legal target for the effects of Sangan and Mystic Tomato.  Its Defense is 1700, too high for Witch of the Black Forest to fetch it, but not high enough to block your average 1900 ATK Beatstick.  Personally, I feel either the ATK or DEF could have been a little higher, but then again, given some player’s opinions of the card, it might have made it too good. 

Effect(s): This is the heart of this card.  It’s not a Flip Effect-it requires you actually Flip Summon it, not just flip it-attacking the card wouldn’t trigger the effect, for example.  Some people still confuse this.  When you do successfully Flip Summon it, you inflict a nice 1000 points of damage to your opponent’s LP.  Now, on its own, this might be kind of lame.  Fortunately, they added the nifty “You can flip this card into face-down Defense Position once per turn during your Main Phase.” clause seen on many PGD cards.  So if you can find a way to keep it alive, the damage can pile up. 

Uses/Combinations: So, how to keep it alive?  Your choice of Messenger of Peace, Gravity Bind, and/or Chorus of Sanctuary.  When everything has to have less than a 1500 ATK to declare an attack, 1700 DEF is plenty.  When only level 3 or less monsters can attack, 1700 is still good enough to handle many common attackers, at least if they aren’t augmented.  And with Chorus of Sanctuary, you get an effective 2200 DEF, which is enough to block most level 4 Beatsticks, except Goblin Attack Force.  Using two or even three of the above leads to a serious lock down on cards.  One might consider combining this then with Bowganian, Swarm of Locusts, and/or Swarm of Scarabs.  The Swarms, when protected in a similar manner, are incredible removal.  Just remember Imperial Order (especially if you are only using Gravity Bind) and maybe some Magic Drains.  Did I mention Swords of Revealing Light? 

Ratings 

Casual: 3/5-Personally, I feel it takes a lot of work to set up a deck where this card will see repeated Flip Summons.  Outside of such a deck, you will be probably be doing good to get 1000 damage out of it. 

Tournament: 2.5/5-Here is where the above deck feels the crunch.  Sound too harsh?  Probably a difference in meta-game: I have always considered Injection Fairy Lily and (running at least one copy of) Solemn Judgment to be staples.  In addition to the normal Spell/Trap removal, that combination gives me a sort of “Gravity Bind/Messenger of Peace”-friendly deck.  Then add in the fact that I still think more people should be running Raigeki Breaks, and you see why that set-up seems so fragile to me.  Let’s also not forget that, for the time being, we still have use of good ol’ Cyber Jar to spoil that hard set-up while also special summoning 2-3 beatsticks and pulling 2-3 spell cards for the average deck.  While the average deck’s set-up  faces more or less even odds of being aided or injured by a Cyber Jar, those with great intricacy like a Stealth Bird/Burner have little hope of a good outcome.  Did I also mention that I am seeing Morphing Jar #2 become more acceptable as a main-deck card? 

Limited: 4/5-Thanks to the combo (which I can’t believe I missed) for D.D. Borderline, this card, and the many other Burn cards in this set, they are all great pulls if you can get Borderline to buy time. 

Summary

Wicked with the right set-up, but to prone to the “house of cards” syndrome for my tastes.