Tolarian Drake

Phasing arrived in Weatherlight as a thematic experiment in permanents that flicker in and out of existence, and this Drake is the cleanest illustration of why the mechanic never found a home. The premise reads, on paper, like built-in protection: the creature phases out before you untap during your untap step, and while it's phased out it's treated as though it doesn't exist, so a board wipe or a targeted kill spell that resolves during that window simply doesn't touch it. But the schedule isn't yours to bend. The Drake toggles on a fixed cadence tied to your own untap step, so it spends every other turn off the battlefield whether you want it there or not. On the turns it's phased out it can't attack, and it isn't around to block on the opponent's turn either. A 2/4 flier is already a defensive statline, and phasing turns that defensive body into one that's only half-present, undercutting the durability the toughness promises. The evasion against removal is genuine; so is the evasion against being useful. Cards like this expose phasing's central tension: an ability that shields a permanent by lifting it out of play is also an ability that stops the permanent from doing its job, and the player almost never gets to choose which of the two it's doing on any given turn.