Spikes & Baron Duel Monsters Comet

Card Article 16: I believe I can FLY!!

Even if I had said I will do Bird week the week the structure deck release, too bad, I never realize it's Spring Break when I said that.

Anyway, welcome to Bird week. As like other theme week, I would try my best to write (few) article(s) discussing flavor, effect, decks, or anything about the theme. As usual, we will kick off the whole theme week with my not-so-flavorful flavor article.

Definition-wise:
As usual, I will use my favorite dictionary.com and Wikipedia to get the "definition" of Bird.

Any of the class Aves of warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered vertebrates with forelimbs modified to form wings.
Feed on nectar, plants, seeds, insects, rodents, fish, carrion, or other birds
... Common characteristics of birds include a bony beak with no teeth, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, flight ("the wing"), and a light but strong skeleton. ...

Well, as usual, the "definitions" itself is not so helpful. But at the end, anything that have flight, feathered, warm-blooded, have the bird shape should be bird.

It does make sense that most of the birds in this game looks the same: unlike Insects or Mammals, Bird itself do not have much different shape or characteristics. Of course, there're common birds/symbols like Eagle (Eagle Eye, Bald Eagle), Phoenix (Nepthyus), Owl, ducks, etc.

There's of course...some "off definition". I cannot go into each one of them, but this are some good examples:
Mirage (e. Fiend Reflection #2): Due to old art, maybe, but I had never seen a Bird with...bat wing...
Tyhone: Again, maybe old art, but it fits the "Winged Beast" more than being a "Bird" (OK, one can argue "鳥獸" make sense as "Bird-Beast" --> "Winged Beast", but Bird is those primative animals, and normal Birds do not attack, monsters birds does)
Dark Bat: OK, maybe I should stop packing on the Bats...but ain't they Zombies?
Wyvern (e. Winged Dragon, GoF #2): Definition of "Wyvern" - "...DRAGON having wings...", English name: "Winged Dragon". Winged Beast/Bird???

Effect-wise:
So, after picking out old arts that are wrong and sampling over what the Bird should looks like (it's common sense), let's look at what they actually DO.

We would look at it from main-type wise. Birds, except 2 out of 47 of them, are either Wind (majority) or Fire (Firebird and like). When thinking about Wind main-type, one can think of what Winds do: basically blow stuff around and round. Blowing stuff around means the whole Wind type should be back-court (Magic/Trap zone) related. Indeed, they are. First, looking from two Magic cards with things related to Wind (Storm and Cyclone), both destroy M/Ts.

Another points that Bird can related to is from point of evoltuions. From this, we can see relations between other "primative" types (i.e. Beast) and relations of Birds and Dinosaurs (Archaeopteryx).

Here's the classifications of effects of the 21 effect Birds...
1. Magic/Trap related: This type of effect related on destroying/returning Magic/Trap cards from field to somewhere else. Cards like [Phoenix God of Nepthyus] destroy M/T, while [Joe] and [Tornado Bird] return M/Ts. At last, both [Sonic Shooter] and [Divine Bird Simurgh], the new cards from the Structure, related their effect to Magic/Traps.
2. Lifepoint/Attack power related: Birds are great, in addition, boosting themselves. Birds can be Stealth and attack opponent from nowhere ([Stealth Bird]...duh), help themselves ([Undead Firebird], [Sacred Crane]), or purely boost their attack ([Firebird], [Harpy Lady 1]). The last two can be make sense with "feeding on other Birds" part.
3. Other: Of course, not all cards have to be fit under flavor. Sometimes they're JUST being Bird because of their art.

As for the second part, none of the Birds have any effects (yet) related to it. But some Beast/Beast-Warriors in 307 have effects related to Birds, while the Dinos one can be seen in the GX anime.

In the end, with the small number of Birds exists in this game, there's always lack of stuff that make sense. One of them that I can think of is that since Birds can fly, they should have advantages on the Earth Beasts. YET, Konami does not care if they're Birds or they're Warriors, they give them the same effect. This makes Bird (and many other stuff) lost their special-less.

This should do it for my introductory. Look for more stuff during this two weeks (since I delayed the start of this theme week).

P.S. Please provide me feedbacks on my flavor articles. I'm still in learning process on what exactly people like to know about so I would not feel I'm writing common senses and nonsenses the whole way.

- Baron, 3/20/06

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