Raven Familiar

You rent this Bird, you don't own it. Three mana buys you a flying blocker and a dig: top three cards, the best one to hand, the other two tucked onto the bottom of your library rather than left on top where an opponent can read them or a mill effect can chew through them. Then the upkeep tax arrives, and you face the bargain the whole card was built around. Pay another three to keep a 1/2 flier, or let it go. The numbers almost always say let it go, which collapses the card down to its entry trigger: a cantrip with better-than-draw selection, stapled to a creature you mostly intend to default on. The order-the-rest clause is a quiet bonus, handing you a sliver of library knowledge on the way out. Read the body as the point and the card looks overpriced; read it as a one-shot effect priced through a payment you can decline and it snaps into focus. That delayed, defaultable cost was the idea the Urza's Legacy echo cycle was probing across the board: a front-loaded effect you pay for later, if you ever pay at all. Raven Familiar runs that bargain about as honestly as the mechanic allows, a creature whose best line is usually to break its own contract on the very next turn.