Sootfeather Flock

Black almost never buys flying outright, which is what makes this design instructive. The headline rate is deliberately flat: a 3/2 flier at five total mana is nobody's idea of a deal, and the printed body is not where the value lives. The morph cost is the whole wager. Cast the bird for three with its identity hidden, leave it sitting as a generic blocker that commits nothing, then flip it up the instant evasion or a surprise body swings combat. The reveal turns the math sideways. An opponent attacks or blocks into what reads as an unremarkable ground creature and discovers a flier in the middle of the exchange, the exact bluff that the whole face-down economy of this era ran on. The cost split also smooths the curve: develop early for three, hold the rest, and unlock the wings later when the extra mana is free rather than dumping all five at once. None of the individual numbers were meant to impress in isolation; the card is a delivery vehicle for the morph guessing game, where worth is measured in what your opponent cannot see rather than what they can. This is common-rarity material built to populate that bluff, a body whose value is the decisions it forces across the board, not the stats on the front of it.