Spell
QuickSwallow's Cowrie
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3479
Tribute 1 Winged Beast monster in your hand or face-up field; add 1 Winged Beast monster from your Deck to your hand with the same Level that the Tributed monster had. You can only activate 1 "Swallow's Cowrie" per turn.
Swallow's Cowrie — Power Evaluation
Final Score: 56 ± 6 · Confidence: Medium
- Intrinsic: 53 · Deck: 58 · Meta: provisional
- Primary role: Searcher/Tutor · Secondary: Starter / Combo enabler
Why it scores here
Swallow's Cowrie is a once-per-turn Quick-Play that converts a Winged Beast on field or in hand into a level-matched Winged Beast from the Deck, so it is a searcher with a tribute cost and no board of its own. It is live in every sampled deck (400 of 400, 36 archetypes), which earns the accessibility and deck-synergy credit, but it is a net 0 card in resources and has no interaction. The high deck count and the Floowandereeze-heavy sample are frequency, not power, so they lift the score only modestly. The combo evidence is thin (2 boards, no starter or payoff roles recorded), which holds the combo axis down.
Axis scores
| Axis | Score | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Accessibility | 75 | Live in all 400 sampled decks at about 2 copies each, and a Quick-Play that is usable in the hand or on the field whenever a Winged Beast is present (observed; the Winged Beast requirement is verified from text). |
| Combo & Conversion | 40 | It appears in 2 of 2 recorded combos with an average power index of 35.5, but it is never tagged as a starter, searched, or payoff piece, so it converts only one level-matched search into the rest of the line (observed). |
| Resource Economy | 45 | Tribute 1 and search 1 is a 1-for-1 with no refuel or extra draw, so it is net-neutral card advantage (verified from text, with the net +2 and +3 values in the combo examples attributed to the surrounding line, inferred). |
| Effect & Interaction | 5 | It has no negation, removal, or disruption, and the combo examples do not show it providing any (verified from text). |
| Material Utility | 20 | It is a Quick-Play Spell that provides no material and only consumes a Winged Beast as tribute (verified from text). |
| Resilience & Flexibility | 45 | It is a Quick-Play, so it can be activated in response, and the once-per-turn limit with a Winged Beast requirement limits its reach (inferred from text). |
| Deck-Building Efficiency | 65 | It is cheap to run at 1 to 3 copies with no garnet or lock, but it only has value in Winged Beast-heavy lists and is a dead slot outside them (observed from deck copies; inferred for the slot cost). |
Calculation
Weight profile: 0.7 Searcher/Tutor + 0.3 Starter/Combo enabler. Intrinsic ≈ 53, Deck ≈ 58, Meta = provisional. Modifiers: none. Final formula: 0.40*Intrinsic + 0.60*Deck
Strengths
- Live in every sampled deck across 36 archetypes
- Clean once-per-turn, level-matched search that always returns a Winged Beast
- Low copy cost, with no garnet or lock
- Quick-Play so it can be activated in response
Weaknesses
- Net-neutral card advantage (1-for-1)
- Needs a Winged Beast on field or in hand to tribute
- No interaction or board presence of its own
- Dead outside Winged Beast-heavy decks
Counters / choke points
- Interaction is not the constraint here: the card gets blanked by any negate on the activation, and by losing its Winged Beast tribute target (inferred)
Best use
Level-matched Winged Beast searcher that smooths the Floowandereeze-based starter line. Decks: Floowandereeze, RaidRaptor, Mist Valley, Phantom Knights.
Evidence & gaps
- Verified: Quick-Play Spell, once per turn, Tribute 1 Winged Beast to add a level-matched Winged Beast from the Deck (card text); Live in 400 of 400 sampled decks at an average of 1.98 copies across 36 archetypes (deck stat); Appears in 2 of 2 recorded combos, never as starter, searched, material, or payoff (combo stat)
- Observed: Average power index of 35.5 across boards that contain it (combo stat); Recorded in 3 guides, one of them listing it in the Staple section (guide evidence)
- Inferred: Net-neutral card advantage because the cost and the search are 1-for-1 (inferred from text); Activation can be blanked by a negate or by losing the Winged Beast target (inferred from text)
- Data gaps: No banlist token; the copy limit is assumed to be 3 (unlimited) Only 2 combo boards, with no combo role tags, so combo conversion rests on thin data No rulings data The deck sample is heavily Floowandereeze-dominated, so the 400/400 inclusion may reflect one archetype family rather than a broad meta No usage statistics for the Winged Beast-only homes beyond 3 archetype rows