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Pojo's Magic The Gathering
Card of the Day

Daily Since November 2001!

Skybind
Image from Wizards.com

 Skybind
- Journey into Nyx

Reviewed June 11, 2014

Constructed: 2.38
Casual: 3.25
Limited: 2.00
Multiplayer: 1.88

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale:
1 - Horrible  3 - Average.  5 - Awesome

Click here to see all of our 
Card of the Day Reviews 

BMoor

Skybind

A "fixed" throwback to Astral Slide? Being able to blink things out for a turn is a great trick. Even with Bestow existing, making a big enchanted creature into one or two small ones can be a big help. Taking a blocker out of the equation for a turn can win races, and if you can get a second Skybind onto the field, your opponent effectively has no board during your turn. You can also use it to re-trigger your own ETB abilities. The "non-enchantment" clause actually stings a bit in Theros block, but if need be you can always blink a land. The land comes back untapped, too, so blink one of the ones you tapped to cast the enchantment that triggered Skybind, and it'll be untapped on your opponent's turn! If need be, all your enchantment spells cost [1] less now, except you don't get the extra [1] until next turn.

Constructed- 4
Casual- 4
Limited- 2.5
Multiplayer- 4

Michael "Maikeruu" Pierno

Today's card of the day is Skybind which is a five mana White enchantment with Constellation that exiles a target non-enchantment permanent until the next end step whenever it or another enchantment enters the battlefield under your control.  The non-enchantment part is a drastic limitation when it requires enchantments to reliably trigger. 
An enters the battlefield theme can be made, but the deck would be a bit conflicted at best and with the five mana cost attached to this it really isn't worth the effort to make this work.
 
In Limited this can help clear the way for an attack by temporarily exiling opposing creatures, but not working against enchantments is a notable weakness in the block.  As a rare this is a little underwhelming and can be difficult to combo with, so passing it in Booster for a strong creature or true removal will often be a reasonable choice.  In Sealed this isn't a compelling reason to run White and even if you are there is only some situational benefits from having this in play, so it can probably be sidedecked to help streamline the mana curve.
 
 
Constructed: 2.0
Casual: 2.0
Limited: 2.5
Multiplayer: 2.0

Mattedesa

Deck Garage

Skybind

Skybind is a pretty narrow card - often referred to a "build-around" card. This means that most of the time, it's a pretty useless card unless your deck is specifically designed to get the best use out of it. Let's put on our rose-colored glasses for a moment and figure out what that perfect deck would look like.

Two things are going on here. First, you have the constellation ability, which means you want a pretty high number of other enchantments in your library so you can trigger this multiple times. Secondly, you have to have non-enchantment permanents that have enters-the-battlefield abilities you want to use over and over again. This already creates a conflict since, by definition, a card cannot fit both of those categories. So, the non-land portion of your deck pretty much has to be half enchantments to trigger the constellation and half non-enchantments to flicker in and out. Then, there is the issue of 5 mana to cast Skybind in the first place. You need to make sure you can get to 5 mana reliably without being way behind on the board. That's a lot of hoops to jump through to make one card work.

Put simply, this is a casual card. It makes my mind race trying to think of the ways to fully utilize the potential benefit of this card. The combo potential is high, and it could be really fun when it works right. But the likelihood of making a truly competitive deck with this is remote.

In short - If you're not playing a casual deck built around making the most of this card, it's not worth playing.

Constructed: 1.5
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 1
Multiplayer: 1.5


Michael Sokolowski

So, Skybind.
 
It's a reusable Oblivion Ring/Banishing Light! Wow! And- er, wait, no, the thing you banish comes back at the end of turn. Well... then it's a reusable Flicker/Momentary Blink! That's great! And- er, wait, no, it costs 5 mana to play and the thing doesn't instantly return.
 
Hmm.
 
The problem with Skybind is that all of the things it WANTS to do are already done better by the things it's trying to be. Do you really want to spend 5 mana to, what, get rid of a troublesome blocker for a turn? That's really not worth it, even if you get it to happen more than once. You'd rather just play some removal and kill the thing. In that case, do you really want to spend 5 mana to get another use out of an enters-the-battlefield ability? That's a little better, and certainly the stronger way to use this card, but still underwhelming at 5 sorcery speed mana.
 
Take a closer look at Skybind's text as well. "Exile target nonenchantment permanent." No bouncing enchantment creatures, no bouncing Banishing Light, or any enchantments with counters on them that you want to reset. Those situations probably won't be relevant very often, but it's still a limitation to remember. There are a lot of hoops to jump through here to make this even sort of kinda work. Get to 5 mana, be playing heavy white, play this card, have something already out with a good enters the battlefield trigger, then have good low cost enchantments to play next turn to get actual value out of Skybind, assuming of course it and the creature you want to bounce live. This card is one of those things that sounds good in theory - the idea of reusable bouncing of enter the battlefied triggers in order to gain a big advantage just from normally playing your enchantment creatures or bestow guys - but it's just far too expensive, far too slow, far too unreliable, and the effect on the board can end up being far too week.
 
The best case scenario here is you build some fun casual deck to abuse the hell out of this, getting it out and having a bunch of really good creatures with enters the battlefield triggers, a bunch of really good low cost enchantments to play, and then pray that the stars align so that it's all in your hand at the same time.  And EVEN THEN what are you getting out of it? 5 mana for a reuse of Solemn Simulacrum to get an extra tapped basic land?
 
It's not to say Skybind is completely useless in all scenarios. And I know there are better examples than Solemn Simulacrum; things that generate creature tokens for instance. But the 30% of the time you're able to pull off a combo like that isn't worth the 70% of times you won't. You really have to ask yourself in the end, what else could I be playing for 5 white mana? You could be playing Celestial Archon. You could be playing Sigil of the Empty Throne. You could be playing Dictate of Heliod. You could be playing Battlegrace Angel.
 
Skybind just isn't up to par.
 
Constructed: 2
Casual: 2.5
Limited: 2
Multiplayer: 2


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