Coastal Drake

Tap to bounce a Kavu, and only a Kavu: that single-tribe lock is the whole reason this 2/1 flier is worth a second look. The block it debuted in built a green-red beast tribe that filled the curve at every rarity, so a repeatable hand-bounce aimed at exactly that population reads less like a creature ability than a piece of dedicated tribal hate stapled to an evasive body. That is the wrinkle that lifts it past its stats: the activated ability is a designed answer to one mechanical population, printed into the environment where that population was the threat. Read outside that context, the bounce clause is functionally blank text, leaving the card a footnote rather than a fixture: you play it for the flier and cash the rider only when a Kavu happens to be staring back at you. It belongs to a design school the game has largely abandoned, the hyper-targeted hoser whose second ability dies the instant you leave the metagame it was built to police. The flying body keeps it from being a complete blank, but everything interesting about the card is contingent on an opponent fielding one specific creature type, and that contingency is both its charm and its ceiling.