Sonic Bird
Wind, Level 4, [Winged Beast/Effect]
ATK: 1400, DEF: 1000
MRL-093, Common

"When this card is summoned (excluding Special Summon), you may move 1 Ritual Spell Card from your Deck to your hand. The Deck is then shuffled."

Here's the first of the Ritual searching monsters in this week's review of Ritual and Fusion support monsters. It should be noted that Sonic Bird is also available in the Pegasus and Yugi Evolution starter decks, meaning that everyone should have one or two copies of it at least.

Unlike yesterday's review, this card's basic statistics are worth mentioning. The Sonic Bird's Wind attribute and Winged Beast Type give it a little support in the right decks. It is searchable via both ATK and DEF, and its ATK of 1400 can duck underneath Messenger of Peace when necessary (with burn/stall becoming so powerful, expect that to start mattering more than ever).

Now, for the effect -- this is about as simple as it gets. Any time you successfully Normal Summon or Flip Summon Sonic Bird, you can optionally pull a Ritual Spell card out of your deck. The only caveat to remember is that a flip due to battle is NOT a Flip Summon, so if you're going to set this guy in Defense Position, make sure it will be you who flips him. For this reason, it's usually more strategic to summon him directly in Attack Mode.

So, what does this kind of searching card do for us? First, it speeds up the Ritual paradigm considerably. Without cards like this, you may simply never pull both the Ritual monster and its Ritual spell card during a duel unless you run 3 copies, which typically interferes with draw probability and deck balance too much. Also, it provides deck thinning and prevents bad topdecks. You pull the Ritual spell card when you WANT to pull it, not whenever it decides to show up.

This card is pretty simple to rate, as well. 8.0/10 for Ritual decks, minimal ratings elsewhere. This card (as well as tomorrow's card) would have a higher rating, but since the release of Invasion of Chaos, there's a better option, which we'll also cover this week. In conclusion for today, don't run Ritual monsters without using Ritual searching monsters!