#sideboardstatus

This week’s card is Veilstone Amulet, originally printed in Future Sight.

The Good: Protecting your creatures every time you cast a spell is a powerful utility effect. It allows your creatures to have a turn to set up  as the cast of the creature will trigger the amulet. On your opponent’s turn, it adds most of an overloaded Mizzium Skin to all of your instants. The very fact that it exists can cause an opponent to second guess playing a kill spell.

The Bad: It is weak it artifact destruction, as the ability never affects itself. It can often become nothing more than a bump in the road to spells like Abrupt Decay where it is hit first before the actual target is also summarily destroyed, though in this case the aster still needs to wait a turn.

Where it might see play: Decks with creature biased combos such as Collected Company can benefit from giving this a spot in the sideboard to help fend off their more removal heavy opponents and protect the combo from most instant speed tricks. 8 Wack variants can also use it as a way to ensure all the damage on the board is going to hit something.

What it deals with: Spot removal and spot disruption of creatures.

What deals with it: Artifact destruction and non-targeting effects, such as Council's Judgment or Wrath of God.

Threat level: Medium

This week’s card is Elusive Tormentor, originally printed in Shadows over Innistrad.

The Good: Starting off strong with a 4/4 body for 4, the Tormentor is a solid mid game threat.The vampire type has decent support, including in set cards that can be discarded without much issue like Stensia Masquerade. The discard to flip is a double advantage when it comes to SoI, as there is a prevalence of madness and delirium that this helps. Attaching any kind of +power equipment or aura can cause the unblockable side to become even more terrifying, akin to an Invisible Stalker with indestructibility.

The Bad: The cost of flipping can start to eat away at you hand rather quickly, even if the deck is prepared for it. When flipped it loses the vampire type for the lesser used and supported (in this block) elemental type. Dies to the fairly widely used Languish.

Where it might see play: Filling a similar role to Ætherling, Elusive Tormentor could see play as a control finisher. Unfortunately, the prevalence of Languish in control decks puts the poor vampire at a disadvantage in the very deck it would see the most play. Some Modern decks might have use for it to provide a soft counter to Ensnaring Bridge that can be run in the mainboard.

What it deals with: The ability to attack as a 0 power creature allows it to sneak under an Ensnaring Bridge of any size. In addition, the ability to dodge both board wipes and targeted removal make it a strong finisher.

What deals with it: Pithing Needle and Phyrexian Revoker can be used to lock it into the 4/4 form, from where it can be easily dealt with. Shrivel effects are really the only thing that can take it out while transformed, but they do so incredibly well, as it can only flip to Insidious Mist at any time, not back at any time. Discard spells limit the effectiveness of the Tormentor, forcing a dwindling resource to be channeled into protection. Languish is a good option, as it kills the vampire in both forms.

Threat level: High

This week’s card is Reconnaissance , originally printed in Exodus.

The Good: Functioning to turn all of your creatures into Gustcloak (before the Gustcloak existed), Reconnaissance can fit into a variety of differing niches. It can be used as a  Dolmen Gate in order to attack without fearing blockers, as you can just remove the creature from combat if the block would hurt your board position. After damage, you can activate the ability during the End of Combat Step in order to untap any remaining creatures and have the Reconnaissance function as a Serra's Blessing. You can also use the effect to back out of damaging a blocking Phyrexian Obliterator or creature with similar effect.

The Bad: Unlike Serra’s Blessing, Reconnaissance doesn't allow you to activate abilities of attacking creatures that require tapping and sill have the count as attacking, as part of the effect is to remove the attacker from combat. Dolmen Gate is superior in the attacking department as it can give you more aggressive favorable trades, rather than just backing out when your creature would die. If your creatures go missing it acts as a dead draw.

Where it might see play: The more aggressive decks that may have wanted this either already have some sort of evasion or don’t care about their creatures dying. Vigilance is nice, but not many decks are willing to run a card that acts mainly to grant it. As such, Reconnaissance is more likely to see play in a deck full of high toughness creatures to act as a better Serra’s Blessing. 

What it deals with: Creatures with on damage effects like Phyrexian Obliterator (only on attack), blockers with deathtouch, and things that care about attackers, like Wing Shards.

What deals with it: Enchantment removal and cards like Suppression Field can make the costs too high to be practical.

Threat level: Medium-Low