High-Flying Ace

A 2/3 flier for three is the white evasion baseline this format actually wants, because the common ground stalls out fast: WB Sacrifice and RW Equipment both produce boards of 2/2s and 2/3s that grind into each other without a closer. This is the closer. The body trades up into the common 2-toughness fliers and survives Bot Bashing Time, which is the red removal most decks register at common.

The activated ability is where the workhorse becomes a build-around in the right seat. RW Equipment with Bespoke Bō or Novel Nunchaku turns the sorcery-speed grant into a one-shot kill on a stalled board: suit up a 5/4, give it flying, swing. WB Sacrifice cares less, because its plan is already chip damage and recursion. So the pick band splits. In RW it's P1P4 to P1P5, ahead of the second copy of any common removal. In mono-white or WB it's P1P6 to P1P8, taken as a finisher rather than a centerpiece.

Maindeck in any white deck that gets there. The punisher is Grounded for Life, which is cheaper on tapped creatures and which every white deck registers; on the draw against another white deck, expect to lose it after attacks. Dimensional Exile is the other clean answer, and it's an aura, which means the format's removal will find this card more often than it finds a 2/3 ground body.

The ceiling is the RW board that needed one push. The floor is still a flying clock that costs three.

A 2/3 flier for three mana with a sorcery-speed flying-granter stapled on, sitting in the deep filler of any white Commander deck that has not finished cutting its commons. The body is the whole card, and the body is a 2/3 flier for three. The evasion line costs four mana, hits one creature, and only works on your own turn, so it does nothing the table will notice across a multiplayer board. Almost any white three-drop with an evergreen keyword or relevant tribe does more here. Cut on the first pass.

Three mana for a 2/3 flier with a sorcery-speed flying-granter is a White Weenie or Boros aggro consideration, and the slot it would fight for is the 3-mana white creature that does work beyond its body, currently held in those shells by cards like Skrelv, Defector Mite and the various one-drop-into-anthem chains that already fill the curve. The body is unremarkable for the slot, and the ability is the pitch: late-game evasion to break a board stall.

The problem is that Modern aggro decks do not stall on the ground long enough to want a sorcery-speed reach button. Boros Energy closes games on damage and burn before the board gels into the kind of stalemate this ability is built to break, and it would rather spend three mana on Guide of Souls or another threat than on a 2/3 that wants held open later. Hammer Time has its own evasion problem solved by Sigarda's Aid and Puresteel Paladin equip tricks, not by granting flying at sorcery speed.

The discipline that makes the card a clean common (no instant-speed blowout, no mid-combat rescue) is exactly what keeps it out of a format that prices everything against Lightning Bolt's clock. A repeatable flying-granter that only works on your own turn, for four mana an activation, is a finisher line in a format that has usually already won or lost by then.

It is legal, but it has yet to register in tracked tournament Modern this season, and the structural read explains why: the slot is full, the incumbents do more per mana, and the ability asks for a late game Modern rarely reaches.

A three-mana 2/3 flier for white decks in Standard that want bodies on the curve, with an evasion-granting ability that does next to nothing in the formats it could matter in. The body is the only part that sees the table. Every set ships a vanilla-adjacent white flier in this slot, and this one's activated ability is gated hard enough (sorcery speed, four mana to grant flying to one creature for one swing) that it stays theoretical in an aggressive shell. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play. Nothing in the current white decks asks for it.

Legal in Pioneer, but yet to register in any tracked tournament list this season. The reason is structural, not a matter of timing. A 2/3 flier for three mana competes for white's three-drop slots in decks that already have better bodies and better text at the cost: Mono-White Humans wants creatures that build the curve toward Thalia's Lieutenant and the anthem turn, and Azorius Spirits is closed to non-Spirits because the whole point of the deck is the lord overlap. Neither has room for a vanilla-plus flier that pays its dividend only later.

The activated ability is the part that would have to find a home, and the home does not exist. Granting flying at sorcery speed, for four mana, to a creature without flying is an alpha-strike enabler: you want a wide board of fat ground bodies and a way to push the last few points over the top. Pioneer's white go-wide decks already close games through anthems and evasion they bring themselves, so the marginal flying-granter sits behind a tax they have no reason to pay. Boros Heroic ends games before turn five and would never spend a turn pointing this at a single attacker.

There is no archetype here that wants a slow finisher gated behind and a sorcery clause. The body is fine and the ability is honest, which together describe a card that does a real thing no Pioneer deck currently needs done.

A 2/3 flier for three mana whose activated ability is gated hard enough that it rarely changes a game. White's three-drop slot in Pauper is contested ground: Boros Synthesis wants creatures that interact with its artifact-and-aristocrats engine, and the white-based aggro lists already have cheaper, more relevant bodies for the curve. A vanilla-adjacent 2/3 flier asking at sorcery speed to grant evasion to one ground creature is asking the format to slow down for a payoff it does not need; Pauper goldfishes around turn five, and a ground stall that wants breaking is usually broken by Burn or a delve threat long before the white deck has open mana for the activation.

The body is fine. A 2/3 flier blocks Faeries fliers and trades up, which is not nothing, but the white decks that want flying bodies in that slot have run them before without the dead-weight activation attached. Nothing in the current archetype roster values the granter clause specifically.

Pauper-legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play this season. The slot it would want is already held by cards that pull their weight without a sorcery-speed tax, and no white archetype is short on three-drops. Sub-one tix on MTGO, which is the honest read: not played at any price.

A 2/3 flier for three mana whose evasion-granting ability costs four more and only works at sorcery speed. Vintage measures three-mana white creatures against a format where Black Lotus and the Moxen produce free mana on turn zero and Ancestral Recall draws three for one; a body that asks seven total mana to make a ground creature fly for one attack is not part of that conversation. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play. Noise.

A 2/3 flier for three mana is paying the Force of Will tax going in, and the body does nothing the format wants. Legacy's white three-drops are measured against cards that end games or generate value: a 2/3 with a sorcery-speed evasion-granter does neither. The activation is too expensive and too slow to break a stall before the format's faster decks have closed the door, and Death and Taxes, the white deck that cares about bodies, would rather have Thalia, Guardian of Thraben or Stoneforge Mystic in this slot. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play. Does not clear the bar.