#serra aviary

More cards with art by Nicola Leonard on Scryfall

Why do birds fly? Do they fly out of a sense of duty? Do birds fly because they must;because they were designed or created for flight? Or do birds fly because they can. Do birds fly for fun? Do birds enjoy flying. These questions represent the main theme in one of my favorites games. If you have not played Tales of Berseria, I highly reccomend you give it a try especially if this philosophical question made you think. All of the tales games are quite good so if you have not heard of the franchise it is one of my favorite jrps with an entertaining and engaging battle system. So why did I go off on this tangent when discussing serra aviary? On blogatog, there has been an ongoing dicssion about birds and flying. The current rule is that all birds had flying. Exceptions could be made for penguins and ostriches because everyone knows those birds famously cannot fly. Recently, they made a roadrunner card and did not give it flying. Roadrunners can fly in real life. This was a reference to the roadrunner from the bugs bunny cartoon who never flew so it was allowed. Roadrunners are know for running fast. It is literally in the name! I did know that roadrunners could fly but it would be strange to give a creature flying when it is clearly running on the ground. I did not know peacocks could fly. I have seen peacocks just walking around the Bronx zoo but maybe they clip the wings. There is one peacock in mtg and it does have flying but it is clearly depicted as flying in the art. Peacocks are know for strutting around and showing off their feathers. Noone ever thinks about a peacock in flight. I do not think a peacock depicted as just walking around should have flying but I do acknowledge that they are birds with flight. It is so weird that flying is so closely associated with birds since some birds literally cannot do this. Birds are birds because they have feathers! A fly is the animal that should most be associated with flight. A fly is called a fly because it flies. Even then, other animals that are not birds can fly such as bat's which are mammals. I bring this all up because serra aviary givesa +1 +1 buff to all creatures with flying. Flavorfully, this card should pump birds only as an aviary is a bird house. Instead, all creatures including angels and dragons, get pumped from being in a bird sanctuary. This just shows the way society thinks and associates things. Birds fly so anything associated with birds can flavorfully justify bonuses to all flyers. I do not agree with this. The card is actually decent. Enchantments are the hardest permanent type to remove and this can see play in a flying deck or an angel deck or a dragon deck or a bird deck or a bat deck. Flying is one of the most basic strategies and this is a simple card that telegrahs the deck it wants you to build. Sometimes cards that strongly imply you should build certain decks are helpful to newer players because they can build competent and synergistic decks without much understanding of complicated strategies. You run creatures with flyingin your flying deck and cards that care about flying. There are better lord effects and this effect would probably cost 3 or less mana so it is a little overcosted but playable in casual or fun games. I do not think your competitive ur dragon deck needs this but a fun bird deck might want this. This card had one spike in 2021 when almost every reserved list card was being bought out but flying is a popular and common strategy. There will be more flying support and this is an easy include. I assume that this supports all flyers and not just birds because this aviary belonged to serra, a popular planeswalker. She was not angel but often took the form of an angel and created an entire realm of angels. They probably wanted a serra card to support angels in some way and since almost all angels fly this was another way to connect serra to angels. I never knew serra was also so into birds though.