Sea Eagle

A 1/1 flier for is the load-bearing baseline of blue's evaluation math: the body designers reach for when they need to know what evasion costs at the bottom of the curve, the rate every premium two-drop has to clear before its extra text earns its keep. Pare a flying creature down to nothing but the keyword and this is what remains: one power in the air, no upside, no clause, just the going price for evasion in common-rarity space. That makes it a yardstick rather than a destination. When you want to weigh what an extra point of toughness is worth, or what a relevant creature type adds, or whether a tapping body justifies its slot, this is the zero-mark you measure against. Dozens of functionally interchangeable 1/1 fliers have been printed across blue's history, and they all do the same quiet structural job: hold the line on the cost of flight so the cards that beat it have something to beat. The body itself blocks the opposing one-power flier, chips for one in the air, and carries whatever you bolt onto it, which is the whole point. It is the creature that exists so the interesting creatures have a reference, the version of a flier with everything optional removed.