According to the mechanical color pie 2017, flash isn't primary or even secondary in so there's nothing that white about this. Given all the white flash dudes it's pretty weird, right?

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/mechanical-color-pie-2017-2017-06-05

> Flash

> Primary: blue
> Secondary: green

> Tertiary: white, black, and red

> Everyone gets some access to flash. Blue gets it the most as it plays into the color's reactive play style. Green gets it as one of its versions of creature destruction. White, black, and red get flash when they functionally need it to get an effect to work, most often with reactive enters-the-battlefield effects.

Personally, I just ignore this though :) ... but I guess that has to do with me having developed my own kind of view of the color pie that doesn't necessarily have to match the current one by WotC.

This one falls in that last category, (needs to be there for the attached mechanic to function), and there’s no way to play it without one of the top two flash colors. I think this would pass the official sniff-test cleanly.

The white comes from the Kithkin tribal theme going into the set.

Having in that mana cost combined with hybrid mana suggests that there is something so inherently white about this that you need to absolutely be able to produce . Add in the hybrid mana and it says "and then one of those colors, but is mandatory". This is conflicting given that doesn't officially get any more flash than or - and all of the abilities of the card are primary/secondary in so why isn't the card a hybrid?

I doubt tribal / a creature type is enough to justify a color, maybe somebody else can comment on this?

Mmm. I see your point that the white is unnecessary given that everything else works in a “flat” U/G design. Maybe a +0/+2 boost as well? Would work as a white effect, isn’t quite how green would execute it, and isn’t really blueat all (excepting Dive Down as an outlier).