Type Fun's Top 200 Enchantments: Part II

#198: Veiled Crocodile

Urza's Saga introduced the "sleeper" enchantments. They were all enchantments that would, on some specified trigger, turn into creatures. While they can be fun, most of them are too unreliable to make this list. Veiled Crocodile is one of the few exceptions. Getting an opponent to empty his hand is easy and many of them will do it for you, making this an easy 4/4 for 2U. I don't think I need to tell you that it's a bargain. And not coming into play as a creature initially opens up other possibilities. You could play Balance, wiping out all creatures and cards in hands and leaving Veiled Crocodile to beat down your defenseless opponent. The biggest drawback is that Veiled Crocodile is blue. Black is the color of discard and in a discard deck, getting this enchantment to trigger would be a mere byproduct of what you're already doing. I hear you can make a U/B discard deck, though.

#197: Wild Research

Wild Resarch is an oddball. It's a red enchantment with an ability that requires white mana and an ability that requires blue mana. What it can do is impressive though. It's a tutoring machine, allowing for repeated searches all by itself. But I've hardly ever seen it used. One problem is that it costs three mana itself and at two mana for the first activation, with different color requirements for both. Reuseability is nice, but only redundant if you use it like a normal tutor. And then there's the random discard. One place where I have seen this enchantment is in Battle of Wits decks to find Battle of Wits (an enchantment that will be appearing later). But I'd love to see it used as a toolbox with a strategy where you don't care whether or not the cards you search for get discarded.

#196: Lightning Rift
There are a handful of viable cards exploiting cycling. Lightning Rift is one of the best. It's typically used in cycling decks that are either built around it or built around Astral Slide (which will appear in this list later on) and using Lightning Rift secondarily. Every time you cycle a card, you can use Lightning Rift to turn the cycled card into the equivalent of Shock. This might not sound amazing, but cycling the card will also draw a replacement, which might also be a cycling card, leading to lots of cycles that add up to lots of damage through Lightning Rift, allowing you to either blast your opponent's creatures and control the board or simply hit your opponent repeatedly for a direct damage kill. Many cycling cards also do other things themselves when you cycle them, giving even more perquisites and forming the basis for a surprisingly good control deck.