Why wasn't this used in the commons playtest? It played well in the consul duel deck.

I tried to fit it in but, as I mentioned in my article, a lot of the flying bodies were too similar. I decided to keep the revolution flier at 3CMC since Revolution's curve wanted to be manageable, and fiddled with the blue canister creature, as the green canister creature - Stilt Strider - already kind of embodied what this card was going for. (Defensive anti-flier with canister online)

The big issue with this is how we want to deal with comparisons between this and (((Sky Pirate))). Are they too similar? Different enough? Personally, I think we have enough variety in our flyers that we don't need multiple 3 mana minor upside 2/1 fliers.

What do we think about this just being unblockable instead of flying? (and maybe a 1/1 for 1U) It looks like we have 4 other slots at blue common that are flying or thopter. I know it's a thing but 4 is probably plenty.

No, this needs to have flying. The Canister lets you attack with this, then untap to be on the aerial defense. If it loses flying, it can't defend in the air, which removes quite a bit of the intrigue from the card.

We did have a Benthic Infiltrator in the set that dropped a Canister, rather than Ingest or Devoid or anything like that, but it just wasn't as interesting as Aerialist was.

If we need to cut a flier, I'd suggest we bump this guy's body up - so he can defend against Thopters better - and drop the other medium flying creature slot from the set.

Just one note, if we want this to behave like you said it really needs 2 toughness to survive thopters.

A strictly better wind drake is possible though this will certainly be pretty powerful in that case.

Even as a 2/2 this doesn't really feel like a great gameplan. If they have more than 1 thopter I don't really want to attack into them, if they have 1 I don't want to spend a canister to prevent 1 damage. I mainly see canisters being used on lands, large creatures, and activated abilities, which this can't be while being cheap and simple. I mean it will happen in race scenarios where the game hangs on 2 extra damage but when read the card and put it in my deck, it isn't the gameplan I am imagining.

Yeah, I was thinking we make this and 2/3 or 3/3, and bring Overseer Agent down to replace this guy.

This card is just a super solid common. 'Nuff said.

This card was both exciting and played really well in the recent playtest.

One player said "Pretty sure I'm just always going to force UG when I play this format. Partly due to this card."