He's either a Black Goblin Sky Raider... yawn...
or a Wind Drake that trades away the ability to
block for an extra point of... toughness. Flying
creatures are nice to have, sure, but you can do
better than this. If you don't Unleash it, it's
not big enough to block anything and survive
anyway, so you pretty much always will, and then
it's a decent beatstick but still not too
exciting. If it had been a 2/1 for three mana
instead, that'd be a completely different story.
Somebody once asked Doug Beyer (the public
face of Magic's creative department) why the
creature type Drake mostly appeared in blue.
Drakes, after all, are creatures of instinct and
usually portrayed as smaller and less
intelligent versions of dragons, who are most
certainly not primary in blue. The answer boils
down to "because they have wings and red has
fewer flying creatures than blue". There's a
dark side to flavor-based design. Fortunately,
they approved Rakdos Drake, which is a very
well-designed card (and coincidentally shows
that the sky won't fall if they're slightly
looser once in a while on creature types).
Unfortunately, it doesn't compare so well
power-wise to black's top tier of flying
creatures: Ebon Drake from Fifth Dawn and
Phobian Phantasm from Coldsnap have more muscle,
and that's before you get into the category of
game-ending threats like Hypnotic Specter. I
could see Rakdos Drake being used in a lot of
fun decks focusing on the creature type or on
+1/+1 counters, though.
Today's card of the day is Rakdos Drake which
is a three mana Black 1/2 with Flying and
Unleash. A 2/3 with Flying that can't block for
three mana just isn't strong enough to be a
worthwhile addition to Constructed decks and
without Unleash it is just a very inefficient
choice. Seeing this in any deck is unlikely and
the only real benefit is outside of mono-Black
or if every Flying option is needed for an
aerial theme.
Basilica Screecher, Nightveil Specter,
Screeching Bat, and Vampire Nighthawk all being
better options in most situations without
costing additional mana.
In Limited this is one of the more aggressive
evasive options for Black and Unleash is nearly
mandatory aside from playing it to block a
specific threat. Three toughness is difficult to
overcome for most Flying creatures in the format
and in general this should be automatic
inclusion with Sealed builds and a strong early
in color pick for Booster.
