Magic the Gathering (MTG) Wayback Wednesday - Reconnaissance from Exodus

by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist

If you were to pick one card from Exodus that would be seeing healthy gains in price, it’s almost guaranteed that you wouldn’t pick Reconnaissance. The uncommon from the set more famous for City of Traitors, Survival of the Fittest, Recurring Nightmare, and Mind Over Matter has seen a sudden growth from around $1 in June 2015 to almost $3 in early August 2015. I’m pretty sure that no crazy Legacy deck has come out of nowhere and made this Enchantment good.

Honestly, it would seem that Reconnaissance is one of the early gainers due to a little mythic rare from Magic Origins called Starfield of Nyx. That card has done a lot to cause more players than ever to consider Enchantress as a relevant archetype in Commander. And interestingly enough, looking at what Reconnaissance does, it actually makes some sense.

Reconnaissance was never a bad card - just a bit narrow. Being able to simply remove a creature from combat and untap it is a pretty strong effect. This allows you to pretty much swing with the team and if your opponent blocks in a way that is disadvantageous to you, then you can simply remove the creatures you want to save. Back when this card was first released, this was a pretty sweet thing to have in an aggro deck. But it hasn’t seen play in a very long time, except on the fringes of Commander: Alesha Slivers and Narset, Enlightened Master are the two Commander decks that I’ve found it in the list.

Slivers makes sense in that sometimes you’ll want to remove certain utility Slivers from combat if they’d be destroyed in combat. Narset makes even more sense because you’re attacking to get her effect of getting free non-land non-creature cards to play. Since her ability activates upon declaring an attack, once blocks are declared, you can use Reconnaissance to safely remove her from combat, and untap her.

Narset Enchantress could become a real deck now with Starfield of Nyx and plenty of other useful Enchantments in White and Blue being printed in recent sets. Reconnaissance seems awfully good in there. With Enchantments being able to become creatures with the Starfield, just like they also can with Opalescence, it’s advantageous to be able to remove them from combat to save them as Enchantments. Even with the recursion that Starfield offers, it still makes sense to be able to alpha strike and then force your opponent to have to figure out blocking around your ability to simply remove attackers from combat.

So if you have any copies of Reconnaissance hanging around, definitely hold onto them. If you can find any cheap, it wouldn’t be a bad time to pick them up. It’s not on the reserve list or anything, but it has the sort of effect that seems unlikely to see a reprint. It’s a Commander only card, but as such an old card, it’s going to have rather limited supply. And if you’re playing any kind of Enchantress deck, it could be useful. Heck, you could even use it in Zur the Enchanter. I think this card’s time of being overlooked as a useful utility piece is finally over.

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