Hookblade Veteran

The one-drop that only wants to swing. Conditional evasion is nothing new in blue, but most designs gate it behind mana investment or bolt it onto a bigger body; here the flying lives entirely on your own turn, which is precisely the window where a 1/2 wants wings. On defense they vanish, and the toughness-heavy body is a deliberate signal: this is not a card built to trade in the air, it is a card built to poke in and slip past ground defense while the coast is clear. The split is what keeps the rate honest. A permanent flyer at one mana would have to be priced as a real evasive threat and a real blocker; restricting the flying to your turn means the creature threatens above the ground on offense but sits flat as a groundbound blocker when it is not your turn. That makes it a natural carrier for anything that scales a small attacker: equipment, a pump spell, the kind of tempo shell that wants a body cheap enough to land on turn one and relevant enough to keep connecting. Note the ceiling on the evasion: it is flying, not true unblockability, so a flyer or a reach creature still catches it in the air. The Assassin type is flavor doing quiet mechanical work, the rooftop leap rendered as a creature that takes to the air while it acts and stands earthbound while it waits.