Keeper of the Nine Gales

Pay attention to the cost printed on the activated ability: it taps the Keeper itself plus two other untapped Birds, three creatures committed to send a single permanent back to its owner's hand. That tax is the design lever. A repeatable, color-agnostic bounce that touches lands, planeswalkers, enchantments, anything, would be oppressive at any reasonable rate, so the effect gets buried under a tribal critical-mass requirement: you need a board of Birds before the engine turns on at all, and every activation strips three Birds off offense and defense for the turn. It is a payoff you build toward rather than a card you cast on turn three to do something. As a 1/2 flier, the body is a placeholder; the value lives entirely in the activated ability, and the ability lives entirely in how many Birds you can muster. That makes it less a removal piece than a tribal-aggro endgame, the card that converts a wide flying board into a tempo lock once the air is already yours. Bounce buys time rather than ending a threat outright, so the Keeper rewards repetition: pick up a blocker before the alpha strike, reset an opponent's commitment, then do it again next turn. This is what the heavy tribal-density designs of its era made room for, a payoff with an enormous ceiling gated behind a board state that has usually already won the game on its own.